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The Real Charlotte. Ross Martin
Читать онлайн.Название The Real Charlotte
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4057664589101
Автор произведения Ross Martin
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
There is something unavoidably vulgar in the aspect of a picnic party when engaged in the culminating rite of eating on the grass. They may feel themselves to be picturesque, gipsy-like, even romantic, but to the unparticipating looker-on, not even the gilded dignity of champagne can redeem them from being a mere group of greedy, huddled backs, with ugly trimmings of paper, dirty plates, and empty bottles. But at Innishochery the only passers-by were straight-flying wild-duck or wood-pigeons, or an occasional sea-gull lounging up from the distant Atlantic, all observant enough in their way, but not critical. It is probable they did not notice even the singular ungracefulness of Miss Mullen’s attitude, as she sat with her short legs uncomfortably tucked away, and her large jaws moving steadily as she indemnified herself for the stupidity of the recent trip. The champagne at length had its usual beneficent effect upon the conversation. Charlotte began to tell stories about her cats and her servants to Christopher and Pamela, with admirable dramatic effect and a sense of humour that made her almost attractive. Miss Hope-Drummond had discovered that Cursiter was one of the Lincolnshire Cursiters, and, with mutual friends as stepping-stones, was working her way on with much ability; and Francie was sitting on a mossy rock, a little away from the table-cloth, with a plate of cherry-pie on her lap, Mr. Hawkins at her feet, and unlimited opportunities for practical jestings with the cherry-stones. Garry and the dogs were engaged in scraping out dishes and polishing plates in a silence more eloquent than words; Lambert alone, of all the party, remained impervious to the influences of luncheon, and lay on his side with his eyes moodily fixed upon his plate, only responding to Miss Mullen’s frequent references to him by a sarcastic grunt.
“Now I assure you, Miss Dysart, it’s perfectly true,” said Charlotte, after one of these polite rejoinders. “He’s too lazy to say so, but he knows right well that when I complained of my kitchen-maid to her mother, all the good I got from her was that she said, ‘Would ye be agin havin’ a switch and to be switchin’ her!’ That was a pretty way for me to spend my valuable time.” Her audience laughed; and inspired by another half glass of champagne, Miss Mullen continued, “But big a fool as Bid Sal is, she’s a Solon beside Donovan. He came to me th’ other day and said he wanted ‘little Johanna for the garden.’ ‘Little who?’ says I; ‘Little Johanna,’ says he. ‘Ye great, lazy fool,’ says I, ‘aren’t ye big enough and ugly enough to do that little pick of work by yerself without wanting a girl to help ye?’ And after all,” said Charlotte, dropping from the tones of fury in which she had rendered her own part in the interview, “all he wanted was some guano for my early potatoes!”
Lambert got up without a smile, and sauntering down to the lake, sat down on a rock and began to smoke a cigar. He could not laugh as Christopher and even Captain Cursiter did, at Charlotte’s dramatisation of her scene with her gardener. At an earlier period of his career he had found her conversation amusing, and he had not thought her vulgar. Since then he had raised himself just high enough from the sloughs of Irish middle-class society to see its vulgarity, but he did not stand sufficiently apart from it to be able to appreciate the humorous side, and in any case he was at present little disposed to laugh at anything. He sat and smoked morosely for some time, feeling that he was making his dissatisfaction with the entertainment imposingly conspicuous; but his cigar was a failure, the rock was far from comfortable, and his bereaved friends seemed to be enjoying themselves rather more than when he left them. He threw the cigar into the water in front of him, to the consternation of a number of minnows, who had hung in the warm shallow as if listening, and now vanished in a twinkling to spread among the dark resorts of the elder fishes the tale of the thunderbolt that fell in their midst, while Lambert stalked back to the party under the trees.
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