The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [12]
Afternoon tea had never flourished as an institution at Tally Ho Lodge. Occasionally, and of necessity, a laboured repast had been served at five o’clock by the trembling Louisa; occasions on which the afternoon caller had not only to suffer the spectacle of a household being shaken to its foundations on her behalf, but had subsequently to eat of the untempting fruit of these struggles. On the afternoon, however, of the day following that of the cleansing of the spare room, timely preparations had been made. Half the round table in the centre of the drawing-room had been covered with a cloth, and on it Louisa, in the plenitude of her zeal, had prepared a miniature breakfast; loaf, butter-cooler, and knives and forks, a truly realistic touch being conferred by two egg-cups standing in the slop-basin. A vase of marigolds and pink sweet pea stood behind these, a fresh heap of shavings adorned the grate, the piano had been opened and dusted, and a copy of the “Indiana Waltzes” frisked on the desk in the breeze from the open window.
Charlotte sat in a low armchair and surveyed her drawing-room with a good deal of satisfaction. Her fingers moved gently through the long fur at the back of Mrs. Bruff’s head, administering, almost unconsciously, the most delicately satisfactory scratching about the base of the wide, sensitive ears, while her eyes wandered back to the pages of the novel that lay open on her lap. She was a great and insatiable reader, surprisingly well acquainted with the classics of literature, and unexpectedly lavish in the purchase of books. Her neighbours never forgot to mention, in describing her, the awe-inspiring fact that she “took in the English Times and the Saturday Review, and read every word of them,” but it was hinted that the bookshelves that her own capable hands had put up in her bedroom held a large proportion of works of fiction of a startlingly advanced kind, “and,” it was generally added in tones of mystery, “many of them French.”
It was half-past five o’clock, and the sharpest of several showers that had fallen that day had caused Miss Mullen to get up and shut the window, when the grinding of the gate upon the gravel at the end of the short drive warned her that the expected guest was arriving. As she got to the hall door one of those black leather band-boxes on wheels, known in the south and west of Ireland as “jingles” or inside cars, came brushing under the arch of wet evergreens, and she ran out on to the steps.
“Well, my dear child, welcome to Tally Ho!” she began in tones of effusive welcome, as the car turned and backed towards the doorstep in the accustomed way, then seeing through the half-closed curtains that there was nothing inside it except a trunk and a bonnet box, “Where in the name of goodness is the young lady, Jerry? Didn’t you meet her at the train?”
“I did to be sure,” replied Jerry; “sure she’s afther me on the road now. Mr. Lambert came down on the thrain with her, and he’s dhrivin’ her here in his own thrap.”
While he was speaking there was the sound of quick trotting on the road, and Miss Mullen saw a white straw hat and a brown billycock moving swiftly along over the tops of the evergreens. A dog-cart with a white-faced chestnut swung in at the gate, and Miss Fitzpatrick’s hat was immediately swept off her head by a bough of laburnum. Its owner gave a shrill cry and made a snatch at the reins, with the idea apparently of stopping the horse.
“No, you don’t,” said Mr. Lambert, intercepting the snatch with his whip hand; “you’re going to be handed over to your aunt just as you are.”
Half a dozen steps brought them to the door, and the chestnut pulled up with his pink nose almost between the curtains of the inside car. It was hard to say whether Miss Mullen had heard Lambert’s remark, which had certainly been loud enough to enable her to do so, but her only reply was an attack upon the carman.
“Take your car out o’ that, ye great oaf!” she vociferated; “can’t ye make way