The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [13]
The greeting was perceptibly less hearty than that which had been squandered on the trunk and bonnet box; but an emotion réchauffé necessarily loses flavour. Francie had jumped to the ground with a reckless disregard of the caution demanded by the steps of a dog-cart, and stooping her hatless head, kissed the hard cheek that Charlotte tendered for her embrace.
“Thank you very much, I’m very glad to come,” she said, in a voice whose Dublin accent had been but little modified by the six years that had lightly gone over her since the August Sunday when she had fled from Tommy Whitty in the milkman’s cart. “And look at me the show I am without my hat! And it’s all his fault!” with a lift of her blue eyes to Lambert, “he wouldn’t let me stop and pick it up.”
Charlotte looked up at her with the wide smile of welcome still stiff upon her face. The rough golden heap of curls on the top of Francie’s head was spangled with raindrops and her coat was grey with wet.
“Well, if Mr. Lambert had had any sense,” said Miss Mullen, “he’d have let you come in the covered car. Here, Louisa, go fetch Miss Fitzpatrick’s hat.”
“Ah, no, sure she’ll get all wet,” said Francie, starting herself before the less agile Louisa could emerge from behind her mistress, and running down the drive.
“Did you come down from Dublin to-day, Roddy?” said Charlotte.
“Yes, I did,” answered Mr. Lambert, turning his horse as he spoke; “I had business that took me up to town yesterday, so it just happened that I hit off Francie. Well, good evening. I expect Lucy will be calling round to see you to-morrow or next day.”
He walked his horse down the drive, and as he passed Francie returning with her hat he leaned over the wheel and said something to her that made her shake her head and laugh. Miss Charlotte was too far off to hear what it was.
* * *
CHAPTER V.
It was generally felt in Lismoyle that Mr. Roderick Lambert held an unassailable position in society. The Dysart agency had always been considered to confer brevet rank as a country gentleman upon its owner, apart even from the intimacy with the Dysarts which it implied; and as, in addition to these advantages, Mr. Lambert possessed good looks, a wife with money, and a new house at least a mile from the town, built under his own directions and at his employer’s expense, Lismoyle placed him unhesitatingly at the head of its visiting list. Of course his wife was placed there too, but somehow or other Mrs. Lambert was a person of far less consequence than her husband. She had had the money certainly, but that quality was a good deal overlooked by the Lismoyle people in their admiration for the manner in which her husband spent it. It was natural that they should respect the captor rather than the captive, and, in any case, Mr. Roderick Lambert’s horses and traps were more impressive facts than the Maltese terrier and the shelf of patent medicines that were Mrs. Lambert’s only extravagances.
Possibly, also, the fact that she had no children placed her at a disadvantage with the matrons of Lismoyle, all of whom could have spoken fearlessly with their enemies in the gate; it deprived conversation with her of the antiphonal quality, when mother answers unto mother of vaccination and teething-rash, and the sins of the nursery-maids are visited upon the company generally.
“Ah, she’s a poor peenie-weenie thing!” said Mrs. Baker, who was usually the mouth-piece of Lismoyle opinion, “and it’s no wonder that Lambert’s for ever flourishing about the country in his dog-trap, and she never seeing a sight of him from morning till night. I’d like to see Mr. Baker getting up on a horse and galloping around the roads after bank hours, instead of coming in for his cup of tea with me and the girls!”
Altogether the feeling was that Mrs. Lambert was a failure, and in spite of her undoubted amiability, and the creditable fact that Mr. Lambert was the second husband that the eight thousand pounds ground out