The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [136]
Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. “Well, Roddy, if you put it in that way, I don’t like to refuse,” she said, wiping a ready tear away with a black-edged pocket handkerchief; “it’s quite true, I know plenty would be glad of a help. There’s that unfortunate Letitia Fitzpatrick, that I’ll be bound hasn’t more than two gowns to her back, I might send her a bundle.”
“Send them to who you like,” said Lambert, ignoring the topic of the Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been introduced; “but I’d be glad if you could find some things for Julia Duffy; I suppose she’ll be coming out of the Infirmary soon. What we’re to do about that business I don’t know,” he continued, filling another pipe. “Dysart said he wouldn’t have her put out if she could hold on there anyway at all—”
“Heavenly powers!” exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a collection of rolled up kid gloves, “d’ye mean to say you didn’t hear she’s in the Ballinasloe Asylum? She was sent there three days ago.”
“Great Scott! Is she gone mad? I was thinking all this time what I was to do with her!”
“Well, you needn’t trouble your head about her any more. Her wits went as her body mended, and a board of J.P.’s and M.D.’s sat upon her, and as one of them was old Fatty Ffolliott, you won’t be surprised to hear that that was the end of Julia Duffy.”
Both laughed, and both felt suddenly the incongruity of laughter in that room. Charlotte went back to the chest of drawers whose contents she was ransacking, and continued:
“They say she sits all day counting her fingers and toes and calling them chickens and turkeys, and saying that she has the key of Gurthnamuckla in her pocket, and not a one can get into it without her leave.”
“And are you still on for it?” said Lambert, half reluctantly, as it seemed to Charlotte’s acute ear, “for if you are, now’s your time. I might have put her out of it two years ago for non-payment of rent, and I’ll just take possession and sell off what she has left behind her towards the arrears.”
“On for it? Of course I am. You might know I’m not one to change my mind about a thing I’m set upon. But you’ll have to let me down easy with the fine, Roddy. There isn’t much left in the stocking these times, and one or two of my poor little dabblings in the money-market have rather ‘gone agin me.’”
Lambert thought in a moment of those hundreds that had been lent to him, and stirred uneasily in his chair. “By the way Charlotte,” he said, trying to speak like a man to whom such things were trifles, “about that money you lent me—I’m afraid I can’t let you have it back for a couple of months or so. Of course, I needn’t tell you, poor Lucy’s money was only settled on me for my life, and now there’s some infernal delay before they can hand even the interest over to me; but, if you don’t mind waiting a bit, I can make it all square for you about the farm I know.”
He inwardly used a stronger word than infernal as he reflected that if Charlotte had not got that promise about the farm out of him when he was in a hole about money, he might have been able, somehow, to get it himself now.
“Don’t mention that—don’t mention that,” said Charlotte, absolutely blushing a little, “it was a pleasure to me to lend it to you, Roddy; if I never saw it again I’d rather that than that you should put yourself out to pay me before it was convenient to you.” She caught up a dress and shook its folds out with unnecessary vehemence. “I won’t be done all night if I delay this way. Ah! how well I remember this dress! Poor dear Lucy got it for Fanny Waller’s wedding. Who’d ever think she’d have kept it for all those years! Roddy, what stock would you put on Gurthnamuckla?”
“Dry stock,” answered Lambert briefly.
“And how about the young horses? You don’t forget the plan we had about them? You don’t mean to give it up I hope?”
“Oh, that’s as you please,” replied Lambert. He was very much interested in the project, but he had no intention of letting Charlotte think so.
She looked at him, reading his