The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [91]
“Perhaps they are not there after all,” suggested Miss Hope-Drummond cheerfully.
“How can you say such a thing, Evelyn!” exclaimed Lady Dysart indignantly; “I know it was they, and the light was a signal of distress!”
“More likely to have been Hawkins lighting a cigarette,” said Christopher; “if everyone would stop talking at the same time we might be able to hear something.”
A question ran like a ripple through Pamela’s mind, “What makes Christopher cross to-night?” but the next instant she forgot it. A distant shout, unmistakably uttered by Hawkins, came thinly to them across the water, and in another second or two the noise of oars could be distinctly heard. The sound advanced steadily.
“Show a light there on the pier!” called out a voice that was not Hawkins’.
Cursiter struck a match, a feeble illuminant that made everything around invisible except the faces of the group on the pier, and by the time it had been tossed, like a falling star, into the tarry blackness of the water, the boat was within conversational distance.
“Is Miss Fitzpatrick there?” demanded Lady Dysart.
“She is,” said Lambert’s voice.
“What have you done with the launch?” shouted Cursiter, in a tone that made his subaltern quake.
“She’s all right,” he made haste to reply. “She’s on that mud-shallow off Curragh Point, and Lambert’s man is on board her now. Lambert saw us aground there from his window, and we were at her for an hour trying to get her off, and then it got so dark, we thought we’d better leave her and come on. She’s all right, you know.”
“Oh,” said Captain Cursiter, in, as Hawkins thought to himself, a deuced disagreeable voice.
The boat came up alongside of the pier, and in the hubbub of inquiry that arose, Francie was conscious of a great sense of protection in Lambert’s presence, angry though she knew he was. As he helped her out of the boat, she whispered tremulously:
“It was awfully good of you to come.”
He did not answer, and stepped at once into the boat again. In another minute the necessary farewells had been made, and he, Cursiter, and Hawkins, were rowing back to the launch, leaving Francie to face her tribunal alone.
CHAPTER XXV.
It was noon on the following day—a soaking, windy noon. Francie felt its fitness without being aware that she did so, as she knelt in front of her trunk, stuffing her few fineries into it with unscientific recklessness, and thinking with terror that it still remained for her to fee the elderly English upper housemaid with the half-crown that Charlotte had diplomatically given her for the purpose.
Everything had changed since yesterday, and changed for the worse. The broad window, out of which yesterday afternoon she had leaned in the burning sunshine to see the steam-launch puffing her way up the lake, was now closed against the rain; the dirty flounces of her best white frock, that had been clean yesterday, now thrust themselves out from under the lid of her trunk in disreputable reminder of last night’s escapade; and Lady Dysart, who had been at all events moderately friendly yesterday, now evidently considered that Francie had transgressed beyond forgiveness, and had acquiesced so readily in Francie’s suggestion of going home for luncheon, that her guest felt sorry that she had not said breakfast. Even the padlock of her bonnet-box refused to lock—was “going bandy with her,” as she put it, in a phrase learnt from the Fitzpatrick cook—and she was still battling with it when the sound of wheels on the gravel warned her that the ordeal of farewell was at hand. The blasé calm with which Sarah helped her through the presentation of Charlotte’s half-crown made her feel her social inferiority as keenly as the coldness of Lady Dysart’s adieux made her realise that she was going away in disgrace, when she sought her hostess and tried to stammer out the few words of orthodox gratitude that Charlotte had enjoined her not to forget.
Pamela, whose sympathies were always with the sinner, was kinder than ever, even anxiously