The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [120]
“Come and help me, Charlotte,” she cried; “I’m afraid it’ll fall on me!”
“I’ll not put a hand to it,” said Charlotte, without moving, while her ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement; “it’s you have the right and no one else, and I’d recommend ye to hurry!”
The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert; she put forth all her feeble strength, and lifting the heavy despatch-box from the shelf, she staggered with it to the dinner-table.
“Oh, it’s the weight of the house!” she gasped, collapsing on to a chair beside it.
“Here, open it now quickly, and we’ll talk about the weight of it afterwards,” said Charlotte so imperiously that Mrs. Lambert, moved by a power that was scarcely her own, fumbled through the bunch for the key.
“There it is! Don’t you see the Brahmah key?” exclaimed Charlotte, hardly repressing the inclination to call her friend a fool and to snatch the bunch from her; “press it in hard now, or ye’ll not get it to turn.”
If the lock had not been an easy one, it is probable that Mrs. Lambert’s helpless fingers would never have turned the key, but it yielded to the first touch, and she lifted the lid. Charlotte craned over her shoulder with eyes that ravened on the contents of the box.
“No, there’s nothing there,” she said, taking in with one look the papers that lay in the tray; “lift up the tray!”
Mrs. Lambert, now past remonstrance, did as she was bid, and some bundles of letters and a few photographs were brought to light.
“Show the photographs!” said Charlotte in one fierce breath.
But here Mrs. Lambert’s courage failed. “Oh, I can’t, don’t ask me!” she wailed, clasping her hands on her bosom, with a terror of some irrevocable truth that might await her adding itself to the fear of discovery.
Charlotte caught one of her hands, and, with a guttural sound of contempt, forced it down on to the photograph.
“Show it to me!”
Her victim took up the photographs, and, turning them round, revealed two old pictures of Lambert in riding clothes, with Francie beside him in a very badly made habit and with her hair down her back.
“What d’ye think of that?” said Charlotte. She was gripping Mrs. Lambert’s sloping shoulder, and her breath was coming hard and short. “Now, get out her letters. There they are in the corner!”
“Ah, she’s only a child in that picture,” said Mrs. Lambert in a tone of relief, as she hurriedly put the photographs back.
“Open the letters and ye’ll see what sort of a child she was.”
Mrs. Lambert made no further demur. She took out the bundle that Charlotte pointed to, and drew the top one from its retaining india-rubber strap. Even in affairs of the heart Mr. Lambert was a tidy man.
“My dear Mr. Lambert,” she read aloud, in a deprecating, tearful voice that was more than ever like the quivering chirrup of a turkey-hen, “the cake was scrumptious, all the girls were after me for a bit of it, and asking where I got it, but I wouldn’t tell. I put it under my pillow three nights, but all I dreamt of was Uncle Robert walking round and round Stephen’s Green in his night-cap. You must have had a grand wedding. Why didn’t you ask me there to dance at it? So now no more from your affectionate friend, F. Fitzpatrick.”
Mrs. Lambert leaned back, and her hands fell into her lap.
“Well, thank God there’s no harm in that, Charlotte,” she said, closing her eyes with a sigh that might have been relief, though her voice sounded a little dreamy and bewildered.
“Ah, you began at the wrong end,” said Charlotte, little attentive to either sigh or tone, “that was written five years ago. Here, what’s in this?” She indicated the one lowest in the packet.
Mrs. Lambert opened her eyes.
“The drops!” she said with sudden energy, “on the side-board—oh, save me—!”
Her voice fainted away, her eyes closed, and her head fell limply on to her shoulder. Charlotte sprang instinctively towards the side-board, but suddenly stopped and looked from Mrs. Lambert to the bundle of letters. She caught it up, and plucking out a couple of the most recent, read them through with astonishing speed. She was going