INTERFERENCE.
A Novel.
BY
B. M. CROKER,
AUTHOR OF
“PROPER PRIDE,” “PRETTY MISS NEVILLE,”
“A BIRD OF PASSAGE,” “DIANA BARRINGTON,”
“TWO MASTERS,” &c.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOL. I.
London:
F. V. WHITE & CO.,
31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1891.
PRINTED BY
KELLY & CO., MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES;
AND GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, W.C.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--BALLINGOOLE 1
II.--GOSSIP--(WITHOUT TEA) 19
III.--THE MALONES OF BRIDGETSTOWN 39
IV.--MRS. MALONE OPENS HER MOUTH 68
V.--FOXY JOE 93
VI.--DANGEROUS 119
VII.--ONLY JONES 138
VIII.--MISS DOPPING TO THE RESCUE 157
IX.--CLANCY’S COLT 177
X.--BETTY MAKES TWO CONQUESTS 200
INTERFERENCE.
CHAPTER I.
BALLINGOOLE.
“So sleeps the pride of other days.”
The town of Ballingoole has always awakened a certain amount of
respectful surprise in the minds of strangers; it is so amazingly
unlike its name! According to tourists who wish to pay it an
extravagant compliment, it actually recalls a fine old English village,
and, indeed, in its palmy days, Ballingoole would not have considered
itself at all flattered by the comparison. Fifty years ago it was the
stronghold of one of the most rigidly exclusive circles in the south of
Ireland.
The wide hilly street was lined by noble and imposing residences, that
looked as if they had quitted country parks and pleasure grounds, and
flocked together for company; liberally planned gardens--celebrated for
fruit and roses--sloped away from French windows at the rear of these
mansions, to the very brink of a slow, brown canal--once glorified by
fly boats, galloping teams and gay passengers, but now abandoned to
lethargic barges, bearing freights of turf and manure. In the good old
days the town was peopled by retired officers (naval and military),
wealthy widows, and well-born spinsters, and actually numbered a
baronet, and the brother of a viscount among its tenants.
There was an extensive collection of the best society in Ballingoole
in former times; whist parties--concluding with very potent negus,
goloshes and lanterns--substantial dinners, with weighty joints,
strawberry fêtes, and hunt breakfasts, were of common occurrence. To
tell the truth, “the town” was somewhat exclusive, and secretly turned
up its nose at most of the county folk; but now, alas! times were
changed, and the county turned up its nose at the town.
As years went on, ancient inhabitants who remembered the illuminations
after Waterloo, and told anecdotes of George the Fourth, had been
gradually gathered to their family vaults, and there was no inducement
for other gentry to take their places. Some of the finest houses were
let in tenements, and displayed small washings fluttering from upper
windows. Several stood empty, with rusty area-railings, and shattered
panes. Over the late abode of a baronet, hung three weather-beaten
golden balls, and the mansion in which Mrs. General Moriarty once held
her famous routs and card parties, thinks itself very lucky to be no
worse than the police barrack!
Yes, the big houses now merge into shops, the shops into one-storeyed
cottages, and the cottages into squat mud hovels, at the foot of the
hill, down which Ballingoole has been going in more ways than one, for
many years past. At the head of the street, two residences are still
let to genteel tenants. Mrs. Finny, a doctor’s widow, and her daughter;
and Miss Dopping, an eccentric old maid, occupy the best houses in
the place, for the traditional old song. This is a consideration with
Mrs. Finny, a lady with a limited income; but Miss Dopping is rich,
and could afford herself a house in Park Lane, if so disposed. She is
the last of her family, the sole legatee of more than one comfortable
fortune, but no one would suppose it from her appearance, as she stalks
down the street, tall, gaunt and shabby. Although upwards of seventy
years of age, she is as erect as a lamp-post, having been reared in the
great back-board period; and, despite her rusty black bonnet, frieze
cloak, and ridiculous purple woollen gloves, there is no mistaking her
for anything but a lady.
It was a soft November afternoon; the hedges were not yet quite bare;
the haws--signs of a hard winter--clustered in thick red bunches, and
yellow leaves, from overhanging beeches, fluttered reluctantly into the
muddy road. There was not a sound to be heard in this still country
spot, save the distant rattle of an ass’s car, and the clump of Miss
Dopping’s umbrella, as she trudged along a foot-path, but few degrees
drier than the highway, _en route_ to pay her quarterly visit of
ceremony, to her neighbour, Mrs. Redmond of Noone.
Another half mile of the greasy foot-path, and a lofty wall, topped
with firs, comes into view, also a pair of big iron gates (once green),
also a winding avenue--which is very green indeed--lined with dripping
trees and over-grown laurels. In answer to a scream of “gate” in Miss
Dopping’s cracked falsetto, a fat old woman, with a shawl over her head
and a key on her finger, came waddling out of the lodge, and said as
she curtseyed profoundly:
“Good evening to you, me lady--a fine, soft day.”
“And how are you, Juggy?” enquired Miss Dopping, with a keen glance
into Juggy’s round, red face.
“Faix, but poorly, me lady. I have had a cruel turn of them
rheumatics; they catches me here, and here, and here”--clutching her
elbows, back and knees, to illustrate her sufferings. “I feel as if I
was being crucified, like the saints and martyrs, but a good flannel
petticoat would put the life in me,” and she stared significantly at
her interlocutor.
“It’s only the damp weather--I feel it myself,” returned Miss Dopping
unsympathetically. “Any one above?” pointing up the avenue with
her notable umbrella--an immense alpaca construction of distended
proportions, likewise remarkable for a huge ivory handle, representing
Death’s head. When remonstrated with upon the subject of its size and
age, its owner invariably replied:
“It was good enough for my mother, and is good enough for me, and will
wear out fifty of your nasty flimsy gimcracks.”
“Yes, me lady, I am afther opening the gate for Mrs. Finny and Miss
Maria.”
Miss Dopping ejaculated something inaudible, and looked over her
shoulder, as if she had a mind to retreat.
“You may as well go up, ma’am,” urged Juggy, possibly divining her
thoughts, “since you _are_ so far. They are in it a good hour or more,
and bid to be going soon, for there’s no tay, or cake and wine offered
_these_ times!”
“Now what are they doing out here?” muttered the old lady to herself,
as she plodded up the avenue. “They were here three days ago to my
certain knowledge.”
“Oh! so that’s you, Pat?” to a shock-haired urchin, with bare red legs,
who burst though the laurels, with a grin of expectation on his dirty
little keen face.
“Let me see,” diving into her pocket as she spoke, “were you at school
to-day?”
“Begorra, I was, ma’am.”
“Then spell Ballingoole?”
Pat became painfully red, and his grin faded.
“Well, well, then never mind,” producing a little knitted jug,
containing coppers, and placing three pennies in his ready palm--
“Have you been out dark fowling since?”
“No, ma’am,” was his reply,--but he lied unto her.
“Because if you ever do such a cruel thing again, as blazing lanterns
into poor birds’ eyes, and knocking them down with sticks, you have
seen the last of my coppers, as sure as my name is Sarah Dopping; so
mind _that_,” and with an emphatic thump of her umbrella, she tramped
on.
The avenue at Noone was not imposingly long, and in a few minutes Miss
Dopping had turned the corner, and was almost at the hall door.
Noone House was a straggling building, with no pretensions to beauty,
dignity, or even antiquity--merely a big, grey mansion, with three
rows of windows, and a glass porch, overlooking a low flat demesne,
fringed with rows of dreary fir-trees. The back of Noone was flanked
by a fine, old, seasoned garden, and many acres of worthless woods,
which swarmed with rabbits. The land was poor and marshy--not to
say boggy--neither useful nor ornamental, and the rabbits were an
important item in Mrs. Redmond’s income. She was the widow of an idle
Irish gentleman, with a magnificent pedigree and a meagre fortune,
who had departed this life, leaving her two hundred a year and one
fair daughter--and she had endeavoured to make the most of both. At
eighteen, Isabel Redmond was a remarkably handsome girl, the cynosure
of many eyes, as she and her mother paraded about in showy costumes, to
the strains of a seaside band. She was unusually lively: she could sing
pretty little French songs, and act and dance in a sprightly manner,
and was taken up, and asked about, by discriminating matrons--with no
unmarried daughters--and more than once had been upon the brink of
an enviable match. Mrs. Redmond was ambitious, and her anticipations
in the shape of a son-in-law modestly stopped just short of royalty.
She strained every nerve--and she was an energetic woman--to dress
her idol with fitting display, and to carry her into the most popular
haunts of men (eligible men). Garrison towns, where cavalry were
quartered, French watering places, and German spas, affected by rich
and gouty bachelors, were visited in turn by Mrs. and Miss Redmond.
These visits were brilliant, if brief; they generally made some gay,
agreeable acquaintances--“birds of passage” like themselves, who voted
them charming, and loudly regretted their departure--as did also their
too trustful tradespeople, for Mrs. Redmond had a bad memory for
small bills. She was an indefatigable chaperon, the most industrious
and intriguing of her sex; and no galley slave, toiling at his oar,
under the blazing Mediterranean sun, worked harder than she did at the
business--the vital business--of keeping up appearances, and “getting
Isabella settled.”
To say that the army list, the county families, and the peerage, were
at her fingers’ ends, may give some faint idea of her reading. As to
writing, she was an untiring scribe, and deservedly merited a private
secretary; corresponding with important acquaintances, with distant,
aged, and wealthy connections, plying all with graceful, flattering
letters, ditto photographs of Belle, and expensive Christmas cards;
snatching ravenously at vague invitations; following up marching
regiments, and anxiously courting the female relatives of rich young
men. After ten years of knocking about Vanity Fair, the most pushing
and plausible of vendors, her wares were no longer in their first
freshness, and alas! still unsold; for Miss Isabel, though beautiful,
was said to have a cold heart, a hot temper, and a head as empty as
her purse. Connections had died, and made no sign. Correspondents
were dumb; promising partners of Belle’s had revoked miserably and
fled; fine acquaintances averted their eyes from what they considered
a shabby old sponge, with a _passée_ daughter, and the poor-house
loomed immediately in her foreground. Mrs. Redmond was at the end of
her credit and resources, and struggling in an angry sea of debt, when
Providence threw her a plank. Old Brian Redmond, one of her many irons
in the fire, having quarrelled with all his near relatives, departed
this life, leaving (to spite the proverbially hated heir-at-law)
Noone House and lands “to the pleasant widow woman with the pretty
daughter”--whom by the way he had never seen.
Joy! Joy! one of the widow woman’s many sprats had caught a salmon at
last!
Naturally she was enchanted at her good fortune, but--there is always
a but. The bequest was in Ireland, the best country in the world to
live out of, in her opinion, and she was obliged to agree to two
stipulations before she could call Noone her own. In the first place,
she must guarantee to reside on the premises, and, secondly, she must
share her home with, and be “a mother” to, Brian Redmond’s orphan
grand-niece--a relative to whom he bequeathed a legacy of two hundred
pounds a year. If Mrs. Redmond objected to these clauses, she had
the remedy in her own hands, and Noone passed on to another remote
connection, one of the Redmonds of Ballyredmond--a childless, rich,
old man. Mrs. Redmond hated the conditions of the will, but she was
socially and financially bankrupt; better to exist in Ireland, than to
starve in England; her health was bad, her energy abated, and after
wearying the inmates of a cheap London boarding-house, with pompous
boastings of “my place in Ireland,” “my shooting,” “my Irish property,”
went over, and entered into her kingdom, with a curious mixture of
satisfaction and disgust. She had now been residing on her own acres
for three years, saving and scraping with extraordinary enjoyment,
ignoring ancient debts, and discovering a fresh and novel interest in
leasing the rabbit warrens, selling fruit, fowl and turf, keeping few
servants, no equipages, and finding her excitements in small country
gossip, feuds with the butcher, and startling domestic economies. There
was also old Brian’s other legacy--Elizabeth, or Betty, Redmond, with
her two hundred pounds a year, which her self-styled “Aunt” coolly
appropriated for her board and lodging, having removed her from school
when she was seventeen years of age, believing that she could find a
more excellent use at home for Betty and her money--in which belief
the astute old lady was subsequently most fully justified. But enough
of the inmates of Noone. For all this time we are keeping Miss Dopping
shivering on its hall door steps. At first she rang gently, but firmly.
After a pause, firmly, but not gently. Finally, a wild passionate peal;
and then the distant slamming of doors, and a heavy deliberate footfall
came in answer to her summons.
Miss Dopping was unmistakably put out, because there had been a delay
in letting her in, and when the servant volunteered to part her and
her umbrella, she was, to say the least of it, a little short in her
manner. The old lady was presently ushered into a drawing-room, cold
as a vault. From an adjoining apartment, the babble of female tongues
and shrill laughter was distinctly audible; in a few minutes she was
requested to “step into the study,” and here she discovered Mrs. and
Miss Redmond, and Mrs. and Miss Finny, disposed in four arm-chairs,
round a comfortable turf fire.