DANGEROUS.
“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’
Said the spider to the fly.”
Her eldest son’s generous cheque had lifted a heavy load of care from
Mrs. Malone’s bowed shoulders. She had caulked and repaired her sinking
credit, with various gratifying sums “on account,” and although the
Major bullied her out of one hundred pounds, and Denis blarneyed away
twenty more, yet she contrived to pay the most pressing village bills
and the servants’ wages, and to purchase some much-needed garments for
Cuckoo and herself. In a new bonnet and gown, she was a comparatively
happy woman, when she carried her soldier son round to call on the
neighbourhood--on the Mahons of the Glen, the Lynches of Newton-Girly,
the Moores of Roskeen, Miss Dopping and the Finnys. Mrs. Finny--who was
as much too sweet as her daughter was the reverse--clasped her bony
hands, ecstatically, in Mrs. Malone’s face, as she welcomed her, and
brought a tinge of red into George Holroyd’s tanned cheek, by saying:
“So _good_ of you, my dear, kind friend, to bring your handsome son to
see us.”
Mrs. Malone’s handsome son needed no introduction to Noone, and was
perfectly competent to find his way there alone! He had received
several cups of tea from the fair hands of Belle--little did he suspect
the claws that were at the end of those soft, white fingers--how should
he? Belle was on her best, her very best behaviour--and he had lunched
there once, in company with Denis, on rabbit pie, bottled gooseberries,
and rhubarb wine--yet lived to tell the tale! but on no occasion had
he come across the girl who had wheeled the bath-chair. Nor, to be
perfectly frank, did he miss her.
After a long morning’s tramp over bogs and marshes, the dark November
afternoons were somewhat difficult to dispose of (a late dinner has
its draw-backs), and it was not altogether unpleasant to stroll
across to Noone, and sit over its drawing-room fire, with a brilliant
companion, who always remembered that he took no sugar, and very little
cream; sang tender love songs, and sparkling French chansons, with
considerable expression; told amusing anecdotes with much vivacity and
gesticulation, and enrolled him in a kind of delightful, confidential,
companionship.
They knew so many mutual military acquaintances, and military stations,
and both were aliens to this monotonous rural existence. Belle was
vivacious in appreciative company, related malicious tales of her
neighbours, flattered him discreetly about his singing and shooting,
and told him, with a sigh, that he reminded her so forcibly of a very
great friend of hers, who, she subsequently let fall, was as handsome
as a god!--and yet people said that Belle was not clever and that Betty
had ten times her brains. Whilst this merry young couple laughed and
talked and sang, Mrs. Redmond dozed over her knitting, or woke up with
a start, to gaze at the animated faces at the tea table, and to watch
George Holroyd furtively, with a cunning, predatory glance out of her
little yellowish eyes. Would anything come of _this_? she wondered.
She was desperately anxious about her daughter’s future. At her death
Noone reverted to another branch of the family, and her beautiful,
helpless, hot-tempered Belle would be left to face the world with a
very scanty income. Her own life, she knew, could not be prolonged.
She was in the deadly grip of a fatal malady, and if she could only
see Belle well married, she would die happy and with her mind at rest,
but Belle was “getting on,” and was, alas! still Miss Redmond. And she
bent all her energies to screwing and scraping every spare halfpenny,
in order to leave her daughter a better provision when she herself
had passed away. Now and then, she had reluctantly fitted her out for
a short campaign in England, for a tour of what proved to be barren
visits, remaining herself at Noone, to count the potatoes and sods of
turf, and to subsist on rabbits and herrings. The mere act of putting
by one sovereign after another, soon became her keenest pleasure, and
the enjoyment grew stronger the more it was indulged in, though she
always assured herself that this feverish gathering in of shillings and
pound notes had nothing to do with a love of money, but solely with
her love of Belle! Belle herself had no anxieties about her future.
She had made up her mind to marry George Holroyd and accompany him to
India--her promised land. She was a young woman of some decision where
her own interests were concerned, and possessed a considerable fund
of tenacity--in spite of which several of her admirers had detached
themselves, and escaped;--and, although she was by no means in love
with her new acquaintance, she was enamoured of his profession and his
prospects, and her restless spirit yearned for the perpetual changes
of scene insured to an officer’s wife. Visions of gay cantonments,
and still gayer hill stations, rose before her mental eye--visions in
which she saw herself living in a whirl of balls, theatricals, and
picnics, the queen of society, the best-looking, best dressed, and
most admired of her sex; with legions of generals, aide-de-camps, yea,
and commissioners, figuratively, at her feet. With each visit George
paid, these dreams assumed more real and brilliant hues. Woe, woe, be
to the hand that would dispel them, and condemn her to damp dreary
Noone, and the society of the Finnys, and Malones, for life--a life
that to Belle, with her intense vitality, and quenchless craving for
excitement, would be simply a living death!
George Holroyd was really quite amazed to find what rapid strides he
had made in intimacy with the Redmonds. We know how easily the great
leviathan may be led, when once a hook is in his nose! and how simple
it is for any idle young man to become entangled in the web of a
pretty and experienced flirt. He began to feel almost apologetic and
uncomfortable, when his mother regularly enquired at dinner “where he
had been?”
And he replied as punctually: “Over to Noone,” or, “I just looked in at
Noone,” “I had tea at Noone.”
Cuckoo’s ill-bred titter, and Denis’s wink, were not lost upon him,
much less the Major’s ponderous chaff, and constant regret that “he
was not a young man, for Belle Redmond’s sake.” Belle was a pleasant
companion for an hour or so, but George was not thinking of her as a
companion for life.
He had discovered that she was a young lady that one came to the end of
very soon. She was smart, sparkling and pretty; her animated gestures,
and the playful little stamp of her foot, were all very taking in their
way; but she was shallow, restless, and spiteful, and had a singularly
foolish laugh. True that to him she was undeniably sweet--sweet as
Turkish delight--but then, with most people, a little of that cloying
dainty goes a long way.
In his guilty heart, this miserable young man knew that he was daily
expected to tea at Noone; that he already had his own particular
chair, and tea cup, and that he had given Belle a quantity of new
songs, a belt of his regimental colours, and his photograph in two
positions; but surely, he would argue with himself, she was a sensible
girl, and too well accustomed to society and the ways of the world, to
suppose that these were more than the most ordinary attentions, and,
then, Mrs. Redmond had been very civil to _him_, and given him “carte
blanche” to come and shoot rabbits whenever he pleased. Crafty old
person! She sold the rabbits in the town for sevenpence apiece, or hung
them in the larder, and saved her butcher’s bill.
To tell the truth, she and Mrs. Maccabe, the butcher’s relict and
successor in the business, were not on very friendly terms. If the
Malones’ bills were alarmingly long, Mrs. Redmond’s were pitifully
small.
“A pound and a half of neck chops, is it, ma’am?” Mrs. Maccabe would
scream. “No, ma’am, _not_ to-day; you’ve had chops for the last three
months. I suppose ye think the shape is made of chops, but let me
inform you, ma’am, that you are under a mistake. Shape has legs and
loins, and fore-quarters; you can take one of them, or go without.”
And then Mrs. Maccabe, a powerful, formidable matron, in a large black
bonnet, would seize an ox tail, kept for the purpose, and lay about
her vigorously among the listening, sniggering street urchins, whilst
Mrs. Redmond would stalk back majestically to her bath-chair--and
subsequently send a pencilled order for a sheep’s head. Mrs. Maccabe
was an authority in the town; even her grown-up married sons quailed
before her tongue and her ox tail, and Maria Finny (herself a fearless
speaker) stood in respectful awe of the butcher’s widow.
“One day,” to quote that championess, who related the story with
virtuous complacency, “she made a holy show of Miss Finny before the
whole street.” Maria, on frugal thoughts intent, had stepped in to
remonstrate about a bit of gristle which she produced carefully wrapped
in paper. “Av course, I know that to please _some_ people bastes must
be made without skin, and sinews and bone. Weigh it, Sam!” shouted Mrs.
Maccabe to her son. “_One_ ounce. Cut Miss Maria an ounce of mate!”
“There, miss,” solemnly presenting it in paper, “I daresay it will
serve you for a dinner.”
Maria flung the packet into the middle of the street, and followed it
in a fury, whilst her opponent placed her hands upon her fat sides and
shook with wheezy laughter.
The widow had her good points, of course, or she would have had but
few customers, on whom to sharpen her terrible tongue. Indeed her
poorer patrons did not care a straw for her abuse, and paid her
honestly in her own coin, with ruthless and ready answers. She was
most charitable in secret, and many a fine chop and steak, and many
a strong bowl of broth, was given away _quite_ on the sly. She was
long-suffering to those who were really badly off, a devout Catholic,
and a liberal contributor to her own Church: besides this, her meat
was prime--unsurpassed in the whole province--and no better judge of a
beast ever stood in a fair than Bridget Maccabe. As the poor innocent
animals passed unconsciously before her, she could tell to a pound how
they would cut up! Her purchases were young, healthy, and well-fed; she
scorned to deal in tough old, milch cows, and skinny strippers, and
boasted that no second-class joint ever hung beneath the sign of “B.
Maccabe and Sons.”
During the days in which George Holroyd had developed so brisk an
acquaintance with Noone, he had never once come across Betty Redmond.
She was not kept out of his way in the upper or lower regions (as might
be suspected), in case her claims to attention should clash with those
of her cousin. Oh dear, no! Belle had no sincerer admirer. Betty was
her willing drudge: she sewed for her, brought her breakfast in bed,
and ran her errands with alacrity, Belle accepting these services with
smiling thanks, and honeyed speeches. Her cheap fascinations secured
for her a devoted attendant, and saved her a lady’s-maid.
Betty, who had known Ballingoole, and everyone in the neighbourhood,
all her life, was quite at home in comparison with Mrs. Redmond and
her daughter. She spent her holidays there, and looked forward to her
visits to Noone, as if she were going direct to an earthly paradise.
She loved the country, whether in summer or winter. She loved old
“Playboy,” the bay hunter who had taught her to ride, and now lay
buried at the end of the orchard. She was fond of the dogs, the cart
horses, the very cows.
She was also fond, in a way, of old Uncle Brian, with his goggle eyes,
red face, and loud voice, but here her love was somewhat tempered
by fear. He set her on horseback when she was seven years old, and
flogged old “Playboy,” over big fences, in order to teach her to ride
like an Irishwoman, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks,
when the chestnut filly kicked her off in the lawn, and went away with
the best half of her habit. He took her out with him when he went snipe
shooting, to make her active and hardy; nor dare she flinch, before the
deepest, blackest bog-drain, and he taught her to play backgammon and
cribbage, and swore at her roundly if she made a mistake. “To be afraid
of nothing, to speak the truth, and to pull up her stockings,” were the
injunctions which he enforced on his grand-niece. He left other matters
to her instructors at the English school.
When Betty was sixteen, her Uncle Brian died quite suddenly of
apoplexy, said to have been induced by a fit of furious passion,
and when she returned to Noone, her heart sank within her, for a new
mistress was coming, and she expected great changes. The new mistress
was an Englishwoman, with a pretty daughter, and both were total
strangers to Ballingoole and Betty.
Betty went mournfully round the place in her new black dress,
accompanied by her intimate friends, “Brown,” “Jones,” and “Robinson.”
There had been an auction of all the stock and out-door effects; the
yard was full of straw, and bits of boxes and newspapers; the stables,
byre, and coach house were empty; the house itself, how dreary and
forlorn; at every turn she missed old Uncle Brian, with his loud voice
and tapping stick, and was very miserable indeed, till Miss Dopping
came that afternoon, and carried her away to her own home, and
subsequently to visit the Moores of Roskeen.
A week or two later, Mrs. Redmond arrived, inquisitive, astute,
agreeable--prepared to tolerate Betty, and to tolerate the dogs--and to
make a little money out of both!
But Betty was a delightful surprise; a bright, clever, active girl,
full of good humour and energy, who knew the ways of the place, and
was most useful in the house, and took to Belle--and, what was more
important, Belle took to her--immediately.
Far from being set on one side, Betty was an influential personage, and
her aunt’s domestic viceroy and right hand. She had not been visible
at the tea-table, simply because she never partook of afternoon tea.
Her Uncle Brian had called it “a kitchen-maid’s custom,” and she
liked being out of doors until it was almost dark. At present she
spent all her afternoons with Miss Dopping, who had been laid up with
a bad cold ever since her visit to Noone, and Mrs. Redmond gladly
spared her niece, for two reasons; firstly, because she did not want
her; secondly, because she had her weather-eye fixed on Miss Dopping’s
money bags. The old lady was fond of Betty, was as wealthy as she was
eccentric, and had no near kin. If Betty became a rich heiress, it
would be a capital thing for Belle!