The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [69]
“Well, Christopher,” she began, sitting gingerly down in the darkness on an old imperial, a relic of the period when Sir Benjamin posted to Dublin in his own carriage, “mamma says she is to come!”
“Lawks!” said Christopher succinctly, after a pause occupied by the emptying of one photographic bath into another.
“Mamma said she ‘felt Charlotte Mullen’s position so keenly in having to leave that girl by herself,’” pursued Pamela, “‘that it was only common charity to take her in here while she was away.’”
“Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with her?” said Christopher cheerfully.
“Oh, I can’t think,” replied Pamela despairingly; “and I know that Evelyn does not care about her; only last night she said she dressed like a doll at a bazaar.”
Christopher busied himself with his chemicals, and said nothing.
“The fact is, Christopher,” went on his sister decisively, “you will have to undertake her. Of course, I’ll help you, but I really cannot face the idea of entertaining both her and Evelyn at the same time. Just imagine how they would hate it.”
“Let them hate it,” said Christopher, with the crossness of a good-natured person who feels that his good nature is going to make him do a disagreeable thing.
“Ah, Christopher, be good; it will only be for three days, and she’s very easy to talk to; in fact,” ended Pamela apologetically, “I think I rather like her!”
“Well, do you know,” said Christopher, “the curious thing is, that though I can’t talk to her and she can’t talk to me, I rather like her, too— when I’m at the other end of the room.”
“That’s all very fine,” returned Pamela dejectedly; “it may amuse you to study her through a telescope, but it won’t do anyone else much good; after all, you are the person who is really responsible for her being here. You saved her life.”
“I know I did,” replied her brother irritably, staring at the stumpy candle behind the red glass of the lantern, unaware of the portentous effect of its light upon his eye-glass, which shone like a ball of fire; “that’s much the worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond of union. At that infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to come within hail of her, Miss Mullen collected a crowd and made a speech at us. I will say for her that she hid with Hawkins as much as she could, and did her best to keep out of my way. As I said before, I have no personal objection to her, but I have no gift for competing with young women. Why not have Hawkins to dinner every night and to luncheon every day? It’s much the simplest way of amusing her, and it will save me a great deal of wear and tear that I don’t feel equal to.”
Pamela got up from the imperial.
“I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising about yourself as if you were a mixture of Methuselah and Diogenes; I have seen you making yourself just as agreeable to young women as Mr. Hawkins or anyone;” she paused at the door. “She’ll be here the day after to-morrow,” with a sudden collapse into pathos. “Oh, Christopher, you must help me to amuse her!”
Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the early train, and in the course of the morning her cousin got upon an outside car in company with her trunk, and embarked upon the preliminary stage of her visit to Bruff. She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she specified as her “Sunday clothes,” and as the car rattled through Lismoyle, she put on a pair of new yellow silk gloves with a confidence in their adequacy to the situation that was almost touching. She felt a great need of their support. Never since she was grown up had she gone on a visit, except for a night or two to the Hemphill’s summer lodgings at Kingstown, when such “things” as she required were conveyed under her arm in a brown paper parcel, and she and the three Miss Hemphills had sociably slept in the back drawing-room. She had been once at Bruff, a visit of ceremony, when Lady Dysart only had been at home, and she had sat and drunk her tea in