The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [68]
This was not quite what Charlotte was aiming at, but still it was something.
“You’re a true friend, Miss Dysart,” she said gushingly, “I knew you would be; it’ll only be for a few days, at all events, that I’ll bother you with me poor relation! I’m sure she’ll be able to amuse herself in the evenings and mornings quite well, though indeed, poor child, I’m afraid she’ll be lonely enough!”
Mrs. Gascogne, putting on her gloves at the top of the stairs, thought to herself that Charlotte Mullen might be able to impose upon Pamela, but other people were not so easily imposed on. She leaned over the staircase railing, and said, “Are you aware, Pamela, that your trap is waiting at the gate?” Pamela got up, and Max, deprived of the comfortable shelter of her skirts, crawled forth from under the bench and sneaked out of the church door. “I wouldn’t have that dog’s conscience for a good deal,” went on Mrs. Gascogne as she came downstairs. “In fact, I am beginning to think that the only people who get everything they want are the people who have no consciences at all.”
“There’s a pretty sentiment for a clergyman’s wife!” exclaimed Charlotte. “Wait till I see the Archdeacon and ask him what sort of theology that is! Now wasn’t that the very image of Mrs. Gascogne?” she continued as Pamela and she drove away; “the best and the most religious woman in the parish, but no one’s able to say a sharper thing when she likes, and you never know what heterodoxy she’ll let fly at you next!”
The rain was over, and the birds were singing loudly in the thick shrubs at Tally Ho as Pamela turned the roan pony in at the gate; the sun was already drawing a steamy warmth from the bepuddled road, and the blue of the afternoon sky was glowing freshly and purely behind a widening proscenium of clouds.
“Now you might just as well come in and have a cup of tea; it’s going to be a lovely evening after all, and I happen to know there’s a grand sponge-cake in the house.” Thus spoke Charlotte, with hospitable warmth, and Pamela permitted herself to be persuaded. “It was Francie made it herself; she’ll be as proud as Punch at having you to—” Charlotte stopped short with her hand on the drawing-room door, and then opened it abruptly.
There was no one to be seen but on the table were two half-empty cups of tea, and the new sponge-cake, reduced by one-third, graced the centre of the board. Miss Mullen glared round the room. A stifled giggle broke from the corner behind the piano, and Francie’s head appeared over the top, instantly followed by that of Mr. Hawkins.
“We thought ‘twas visitors when we heard the wheels,” said Miss Fitzpatrick, still laughing, but looking very much ashamed of herself, “and we went to hide when they passed the window for fear we’d be seen.” She paused, not knowing what to say, and looked entreatingly at Pamela. “I never thought it’d be you—”
It was borne in on her suddenly that this was not the manner in which Miss Dysart would have acted under similar circumstances, and for the first time a doubt as to the fitness of her social methods crossed her mind.
Pamela, as she drove home after tea, thought she understood why it was that Miss Mullen did not wish her cousin to be left to her own devices in Lismoyle.
* * *
CHAPTER XVIII.
There was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of running water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer. Christopher’s long hands moved mysteriously in the crimson light, among phials, baths, and cases of negatives, while uncanny smells of various acids and compounds thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks towered dimly in the corners, a superannuated sofa stood on its head by the wall, with its broken hindlegs in the air, three old ball skirts hung like ghosts of Bluebeard’s wives upon the door, from which, to Christopher’s developing tap, a narrow passage forced its angular way.
There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of attic stairs, accompanied by a pattering