The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [135]
“Would you like to come downstairs, Charlotte, and sit in the drawing-room?” he said, presently; “if it wasn’t that I’m afraid you might be tired after your walk, I’d ask you to help me with a very painful bit of work that I was just at when you came.”
They had been standing in the passage, and Charlotte’s eyes darted towards the half-open door of Mrs. Lambert’s room.
“You’re settling her things, I suppose?” she said, her voice treading eagerly upon the heels of his; “is it that you want me to help you with?”
He led the way into the room without answering, and indicated its contents with a comprehensive sweep of his hand.
“I turned the key in this door myself when I came back from the funeral, and not a thing in it has been touched since. Now I must set to work to try and get the things sorted, to see what I should give away, and what I should keep, and what should be destroyed,” he said, his voice resuming its usual business tone, tinged with just enough gloom to mark his sense of the situation.
Charlotte peeled off her black gloves and stuffed them into her pocket. “Sit down, my poor fellow, sit down, and I’ll do it all,” she said, stripping an armchair of its sheet and dragging it to the window; “this is no fit work for you.”
There was no need to press this view upon Lambert; he dropped easily into the chair provided for him, and in a couple of minutes the work was under weigh.
“Light your pipe now and be comfortable,” said Charlotte, issuing from the wardrobe with an armful of clothes and laying them on the bed; “there’s work here for the rest of the morning.” She took up a black satin skirt and held it out in front of her; it had been Mrs. Lambert’s “Sunday best,” and it seemed to Lambert though he could hear his wife’s voice asking anxiously if he thought the day was fine enough for her to wear it. “Now what would you wish done with this?” said Charlotte, looking at it fondly, and holding the band against her own waist to see the length. “It’s too good to give to a servant.”
Lambert turned his head away. There was a crudeness about this way of dealing that was a little jarring at first.
“I don’t know what’s to be done with it,” he said, with all a man’s helpless dislike of such details.
“Well, there’s this, and her sealskin, and a lot of other things that are too good to be given to servants,” went on Charlotte, rapidly bringing forth more of the treasures of the poor turkey-hen’s wardrobe, and proceeding to sort them into two heaps on the floor. “What would you think of making up the best of the things and sending them up to one of those dealers in Dublin? It’s a sin to let them go to loss.”
“Oh, damn it, Charlotte! I can’t sell her clothes!” said Lambert hastily. He pretended to no sentiment about his wife, but some masculine instinct of chivalry gave him a shock at the thought of making money out of the conventional sanctities of a woman’s apparel.
“Well, what else do you propose to do with them?” said Charlotte, who had already got out a pencil and paper and was making a list. “Upon my soul, I don’t know,” said Lambert, beginning to realise that there was but one way out of the difficulty, and perceiving with irritated amusement that Charlotte had driven him towards it like a sheep, “unless you’d like them yourself?”
“And do you think I’d accept them from you?” demanded Charlotte, with an indignation so vivid that even the friend of her youth was momentarily deceived and almost frightened by it; “I, that was poor Lucy’s oldest friend! Do you think I could bear—”
Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for him.
“It’s only because you were her oldest friend that I’d offer them to you,” he struck in; “and if you won’t have them