The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [178]
The strip of grass by the roadside widened as they left the rocky country, and the deep dints of galloping hoofs became apparent on it. Lambert pointed to them with his whip, and laughed contemptuously.
“If I had a thick-winded pony like your friend Mr. Hawkins, I wouldn’t bucket her up hill in that sort of way. She’d do well enough if he had the sense to take her easy; but in all my knowledge of soldiers— and I’ve seen a good few of them here now—I’ve never seen a more self-sufficient jackass in the matter of horses than Hawkins. I wouldn’t trust him with a donkey.”
“You’d better tell him so,” said Francie, indifferently. Lambert chose to suspect a sneer in the reply.
“Tell him so!” he said hotly. “I’d tell him so pretty smart, if I thought there was a chance of his getting outside a horse of mine. But I think it’ll be a long day before that happens!”
“Maybe he wouldn’t thank you for one of your horses.”
“No, I’ll bet he wouldn’t say thank you,” said Lambert, a thrill of anger darting to his brain. “He’s a lad that’ll take all he can get and say nothing about it, and chuck it away to the devil when he’s done with it.”
“I’m sure I don’t care what he does!” exclaimed Francie, with excusable impatience. “I wonder if he’s able to get into a passion about nothing, the way you’re doing now!”
“It didn’t look this afternoon as if you cared so little about what he does!” said Lambert, his breath coming short. “May I ask if you knew he was coming, that you were in such a hurry back to the house to meet him? I suppose you settled it when he came to see you on Saturday.”
“Since you know all about it, there’s no need for me to contradict you!” Francie flashed back.
One part of Lambert knew that he was making a fool of himself, but the other part, which was unfortunately a hundred times the stronger, drove him on.
“Oh, I daresay you found it very pleasant, talking over old times,” he retorted, releasing the thought at last like a long caged beast; “or was he explaining how it was he got tired of you?”
Francie sat still and dumb; the light surface anger startled out of her in a moment, and its place taken by a suffocating sense of outrage and cruelty. She did not know enough of love to recognise it in this hideous disguise of jealousy; she only discerned the cowardly spitefulness, and it cut down to that deep place in her soul, where, since childhood, had lain her trust in him. She did not say a word, and Lambert went on:
“Oh, I see you are too grand to answer me; I suppose it’s because I’m only your husband that you think I’m not worth talking to.” He gave the horse a lash of the whip, and then chucked up its head as it sprang forward, making the trap rock and jerk. The hateful satisfaction of taunting her about Hawkins was beginning to die on him like drunkenness, and he dimly saw what it was going to cost him. “You make me say these sort of things to you,” he broke out, seeing that she would not speak. “How can I help it, when you treat me like the dirt under your feet, and fight with me if Isay a word to you that you don’t like? I’d like to see the man that would stand it!”
He looked down at her, and saw her head drooping forward, and her hand up to her face. He could not say more, as at that moment Mary Holloran was holding the gate open for him to drive in; and as he lifted his wife out of the trap at the hall door, and saw the tears that she could no longer hide from him, he knew that his punishment had begun, and the iron entered into his soul.
* * *
CHAPTER XLVI.
A few days afterwards Lambert started on his rent-collecting tour. Peace of a certain sort was restored, complete in outward seeming, but with a hidden flaw that both knew and pretended to ignore. When Lambert sat by