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. III.
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.--“MISERRIME” 1
II.--“THE HONEYMOON” 27
III.--A NEW LIFE 51
IV.--MRS. HOLRYOD DESIRES TO LOOK INTO THE PAST 74
V.--MRS. REDMOND’S CONFESSION 95
VI.--A GRAND SURPRISE FOR GEORGE 119
VII.--A STORY IN HER EYES 138
VIII.--MR. REDMOND’S AMBASSADOR 155
IX.--SOMETHING TO READ 183
X.--IN WHICH BELLE’S WISH IS FULFILLED 210
INTERFERENCE.
CHAPTER I.
“MISERRIME.”
On the strength of his increase of income, Mr. Holroyd purchased two
ponies, and a cart (and this cart, it was noted, had a ladies’ step).
He had long admired a certain empty bungalow with a large garden, and
rose-screened verandah. More than once he had inspected the interior,
and at last he boldly gave orders to the landlord to have the garden
put in order, the hedges clipped, and the rooms matted. When it became
noised abroad that George Holroyd had been seen looking over a large
double house, that he had ordered a dinner-service, and a piano,
the truth could be no longer concealed, he was going to be married!
This was a fine piece of news for Mangobad. The men congratulated him
somewhat sadly but the ladies made up for them in fervour, and were
all on the _qui vive_ to know what the bride would be like. Captain
La Touche, being searchingly cross-questioned, was able to gratify
them with a few particulars respecting her. She was young--only
nineteen--Irish, and pretty, and, as far as he could make out, she
would be an agreeable addition to their circle. Mr. Holroyd was not
the least bashful in accepting their good wishes, and seemed anxious
to bespeak their friendship for his future wife. She was so young
and inexperienced, he declared--quite a child in many ways, and only
hitherto accustomed to a very quiet country life. He was exceedingly
grateful for any suggestions offered by notable housekeepers and a
great deal of advice was placed ungrudgingly at his service. The
Judge’s wife engaged a cook, khansamah, and ayah; the Chaplain’s sister
superintended the purchase of lamps and kitchen utensils, the Colonel’s
two daughters chose furniture for the drawing-room, and went over the
rooms and discussed arrangements and ornamentation with zeal.
All at once the community were electrified to hear that Mr. Holroyd
had suddenly changed his mind about what was called the “garden”
bungalow, and was going into the two-storeyed one, which had so long
stood empty--the bungalow in which the last tenant, Major Bagshawe, had
cut his throat. What was the reason of such an extraordinary freak?
Why exchange a modern, well-built house, with a cheerful aspect, for
a gloomy tumble-down mansion--certainly more imposing, and standing
in quite a park-like enclosure, but which had been abandoned to
rats and ghosts for years. No one knew the motive for this strange
proceeding--not even Captain La Touche.
A few days before “this mysterious caprice of George Holroyd’s,” the
long desired mail had been received--the mail which was to bring him
Betty’s answer in her own handwriting, instead of that of the telegraph
Baboo. The night before it was delivered in Mangobad, he could scarcely
close his eyes. He was astir by daybreak, and watching for the post
peon long before that worthy began his rounds. Here he came in sight
at last, and with a good plump packet of letters in his hand. George
almost tore them from him, and then hurried into his room to read them
in solitude, where no bearer with tea, or sweeper with broom, dared
disturb him. There was one from his mother, one from his lawyer, one
from Mrs. Redmond, one from Belle, but where was Betty’s? He turned
them over very carefully, and then ran out after the dakwalla. “Hullo!
Stop! Hold on!” he shouted (in Hindustani of course), “you have another
letter for me.”
The man halted and showed his wallet; there was nothing else addressed
to Mr. Holroyd, no, not even a trade circular. “There must be some
mistake,” he muttered to himself, as he slowly retraced his steps.
Could she have missed the mail? He must only content himself with Mrs.
Redmond’s epistle for the present, and, happy thought, that thrifty
old lady’s effusion might contain Betty’s letter after all! Alas, no,
there was only one sheet of paper within the envelope, and this is what
it said:
“DEAR MR. HOLROYD,--Your letter and enclosure reached me by the last
mail, and I am rather concerned as to how to reply to it, for I have
taken a step that will surprise you and which you may never forgive--I
have given your offer of marriage to my daughter Belle.”
A rush of blood came suddenly to George Holroyd’s ears, the paper
seemed to swim before him; he threw it down on the table, and placing
both hands to his head, exclaimed aloud:
“I must be going mad! Either that, or she is writing from a lunatic
asylum!”
After a moment’s pause, he once more snatched up the letter, and read
on:
“There was nothing in your note that did not equally apply to her, and
Belle is _so_ fond of you, and you paid her such marked attention,
that if you were to marry Betty she would lose her reason--or break
her heart.
“India has always been her dream, and, with you and India combined,
her happiness is assured, and I may tell you frankly, that this is all
that I now care for. You will think me a very wicked, unprincipled old
woman, but I have your interests at heart, as well as Belle’s, and,
though I shall not live to know it, you will approve of my conduct
_yet_. I am dying by inches. I may not see another summer, and I obey
the most natural of all instincts in providing (when I can) for my own
child. Even if you execrate me, I can endure your hatred, for I shall
be supported by the conviction, that I have done well.
“Belle, beautiful, animated, and accustomed to the best military
society, is the beau ideal of an officer’s wife, and will be in a
congenial sphere--your credit and your comfort. Betty--a simple,
little, awkward girl, with no ideas beyond horses and dogs and
flowers--is cut out for the position _she_ is about to fill; as the
wife of a wealthy country gentleman, she can make herself happy in
her own land, she is in her element among poor people, or in the
hunting-field, and would be quite miserable in India. She is going to
marry Augustus Moore; they are devotedly attached to one another, and
he has known her from her childhood.”
“_Mentitor fortiter_,” was Mrs. Redmond’s motto, and to do her justice,
she lived up to it; in a crisis like the present _what_ was a lie more
or less? This notable falsehood gave a neat and suitable finish to
the whole scheme. Moreover, like all lies of the most dangerous class,
it contained a grain of the truth--Augustus Moore had known Betty from
childhood, and a less keen-sighted woman than the mistress of Noone,
could see that he was her slave; the match was merely a question of
time.
“In withholding your offer from Betty,” the letter went on to say, “I
am sparing you the mortification of a refusal. I have put the round
people in the round holes in spite of you, you see, and by the time
you are reading this, Belle (who knows nothing, poor darling) will be
half way to India with the Calverts. Betty has been helping her most
zealously in her preparations, and keeping up all our spirits with her
merry ways, and gay little jokes and songs.
“I do not know what we should have done without her; she has not
the faintest suspicion that you care for her, for all her thoughts
are fixed in _another_ direction. Be good to Belle--she is quite a
child, a spoiled child in many ways; she is not much of a manager or
housekeeper, for I have wished her to make the most of her youth,
and only asked her to be happy and to look pretty. She is devoted to
you, and has been so from the very first, though with true maidenly
dignity she has concealed her feelings--even from _me_, but I know
that the prospect of being your wife, has filled her with unspeakable
happiness. Perhaps, after all, you may repudiate her love, you may
refuse to receive her, and leave her a friendless, nervous, sensitive
girl, unwelcomed in a strange land--only to return home broken-hearted,
dis-illusioned, and disgraced; but I scarcely believe you will be
capable of this, knowing that she loves you, confides in you, and has
no friends in India. Do not answer this letter. I may as well tell you,
candidly, that if you do I shall not read it, but will put it into the
fire, for in my failing health, my medical man advises me strictly
against any kind of unnecessary agitation. Pray, believe me yours most
faithfully,
“EMMA REDMOND.”
By the time George Holroyd had come to the end of this precious
epistle, it would be impossible to describe his feelings; they were
a mixture of incredulity, horror, agonising disappointment, and
uncontrollable fury.
“Mrs. Redmond was mad!” this he swore with a great oath; “or he was
mad, and everyone was mad.”
He seized his mother’s letter, much as a drowning man clutches at a
straw; it proved to be a somewhat querulous effusion, wondering that he
had never given _her_ a hint of his intentions, amazed to hear of his
engagement to Belle, and pathetically imploring him to “think it over,”
but wishing him every happiness--whatever his fate. Delighted at the
news of his uncle’s generosity, and hinting (nay, more than hinting)
that he might share some of his good fortune with Denis--openly stating
that his poor dear brother wrote the most pitiful accounts of his
circumstances, and that she was sure he would be annoyed to hear that
he had actually applied to Mrs. Maccabe for pecuniary assistance,
instead of to his _own_ flesh and blood, and that a line to Denis
Malone, care of the barman at the Kangaroo Arms, Albany, South
Australia, would always find him.
George put this epistle aside, and tore open Belle’s envelope with a
shaking hand.
When his eyes fell on the page beginning “My own, own darling,” he
crumbled the letter up into a ball, and dashed it from him with
anything but a lover-like gesture.
Then he rose and began to walk about the room like a man possessed. He
might have guessed how it would be! Betty was not bound to him in any
way, and whilst he had been toiling for her in silence, at the other
side of the world--Ghosty Moore was within speech--within a ride!
Ghosty Moore was rich, young, and popular. He could give her everything
her heart desired. She would marry him, and be beloved, admired and
happy. A county lady with half a dozen hunters, and as many dogs as
she pleased. As for him, his life was wrecked, it did not matter what
became of him; he threw himself into a chair, leant his arms on the
table, buried his head in them, and wished himself dead.
That Betty was lost to him was beyond doubt, and that Belle was on
her way out to marry him, was also beyond doubt; but no, he said to
himself fiercely, he would never make her his wife, and thus fulfil the
schemes, and be the easy tool, of her iniquitous old mother; never!
To have the dearest hopes of his life dispersed by one shattering blow
was surely sufficiently hard for a man to bear, but to have another
fate imperatively thrust on him within the same hour--a fate from which
his highest and best feelings instinctively recoiled--a fate that
his heart most passionately repudiated--this was to drink the cup of
bitterness to the dregs, twice!
And if he refused to accept Belle as his bride, what was his
alternative? he asked himself, with fierce perplexity.
He felt dazed and stunned; the more he endeavoured to muster his
thoughts, to pursue ideas, to reach some definite plan, the more
unmanageable those thoughts and ideas became.
It was desperately hard to realise that one short ten minutes had
changed the whole current of his life.
* * * * *
Even to one’s old familiar friend, I doubt if it is wise to give the
entrée to your private room at all hours. He may chance to find a
soul in earthly torment, a mind _en deshabille_, with the mask of
conventionality, and the cloak of reserve, torn off, and thrown to the
winds.
Captain La Touche was whistling cheerily as he crossed the verandah,
and entered his comrade’s apartment. He looked cool, handsome, and
debonnair in his creaseless white suit and spotless linen (he was such
a dandy that he actually sent his shirts twice a month to England to
be washed; and oh! feat beyond the dhoby!_glazed_). He had evidently
had a good mail, for his face was radiant, and he carried a packet
of letters, and a French comic paper in his hand. All at once his
whistling ceased, as his eyes fell on his comrade’s prone head--and the
torn and discarded letters scattered broadcast about the floor.
“Hullo, George, my dear old chap!” he exclaimed, “you have not any bad
news I hope. No one dead, eh?”
George raised a rigid white face to his, and gazed at him blankly and
shook his head.
“Your money gone again, eh?”
“No!”
“Oh, come then, it can’t be so very bad, pull yourself together, my
son, and have a whisky and soda; you look as if you had been knocked
into the middle of next week. What is it all about?”
“I’ve--I’ve a splitting headache.”
“Oh, and is _that_ all?” rather dubiously.
“And some rather worrying letters,” he continued, making a great effort
to carry out the second part of his visitor’s prescription. “I shall be
all right by and by, don’t mind me.”
At first a wild idea had flashed through his brain. He would consult
his friend, and put the whole story before him, like a hard case in
_Vanity Fair_, and say, “supposing a man proposes for one girl, and
another comes out instead, believing that _she_ is the right one--what
would you do? Marry her?” But as he gazed at Captain La Touche, that
sleek, prosperous, cynical bachelor, Lord President of the Mess
(sometimes a heritage of woe) and bitter enemy of matrimony, his heart
failed him. “Joe,” as he was called, would explode into one of his loud
bursts of laughter, and declare that it was the best joke he had ever
heard in the whole course of his life! Instead of being sober-minded
and sympathetic, he would chaffingly examine the capabilities of the
subjects for burlesque treatment; he would be jocose and unbearable.
But in this belief George did his friend injustice!
In one vivid mental flash, he saw the ordeal he would now have to
face at mess, an ordeal he dared not confront. The good-humoured
jokes, congratulations, and presents of his brother officers, were
acceptable enough yesterday, but _to-day_ they would be torture, as it
were, searing a gaping wound with red-hot iron. How was he to assume
a part--he being no actor at the best of times--the part of the happy
and expectant bridegroom! His thoughts flew to a certain lonely dâk
bungalow, about twenty miles out, rarely frequented, and sufficiently
far from the haunts of men. He would go in at once for ten days’ leave
for snipe shooting, put a few things together, and gallop out there
as soon as orderly-room was over. He must be alone, like some wounded
animal, that plunges into the thicket, when it has received a mortal
hurt--that it may die apart from its fellows, and endure its agony
unseen.
Once there, he would have time to advise with himself, to review the
whole burning question, and to meditate on falsified hopes, abandoned
aims, and a lost love.
The maturing of this sudden project did not occupy sixty seconds, and
Captain La Touche was still standing interrogatively in the doorway.
“I’m not feeling very fit, Joe, the cramming _is_ beginning to tell as
you predicted. I think I shall go out for ten days’ snipe shooting, to
blow the cobwebs out of my brains.”
“It’s too early for snipe,” objected his visitor, “make it the end of
next week, and _I’ll_ go with you, old man!”
“I saw several wisps coming in last evening and----”
“And of course I _forgot_,” interrupted the other jocosely, “your time
is short, poor fellow, and who knows if it may not be your _last_
shoot. Such things have happened! Where are you going?”
“I was thinking of Sungoo,” he returned rather nervously.
“Sungoo! A nasty feverish hole! I would not go there if I were you.”
“There are several first class jheels about, and I’d like to make a
good bag,” returned the other, now lying as freely as Mrs. Redmond
herself.
“Well, well, have your own way, you always do,” returned his chum with
a French shrug of his broad shoulders. “’Pon my word, you gave me a
jolly good fright, just now, I thought there was bad news, something up
at home. By-bye,” and he opened his big white umbrella, and strode off
to breakfast.
Sungoo dâk bungalow was retired enough for St. Anthony himself; it
stood aloof from the high road, behind a clump of bamboos, and a hedge
of somewhat dusty cactus.
George Holroyd’s active bearer made daily raids on the nearest village
for fowl and eggs and goat’s milk, whilst his master paced the
verandah, or tramped over the country, and fought with his thoughts,
and endeavoured to shape out his future life. Willingly would he change
his lot for that of one of the cheerful brown tillers of the soil, by
whom he was surrounded, and whom he came across in his long and aimless
wanderings. How absorbed and interested was that young fellow, as he
sat at the edge of a tank, dividing his time between his bamboo rod,
and bobbing line, and the inevitable _huka_ that stood beside him.
_He_ did not seem to have a care in the world!--and it was never
likely to be _his_ fate to marry a woman against his will! All the
same, did his envious observer but know the truth, it was more than
probable that the same young man had been married from his cradle.
Sungoo dâk bungalow was not only famed for seclusion and sport--it
was notoriously unhealthy; the rank vegetation and the vapours from
the neighbouring reedy snipe jheels made it an undesirable residence.
Hideous spiders with wormy legs, and semi-tame toads abounded in the
three small rooms. Mushrooms grew out of the walls, a family of noisy
civet cats lodged in the roof, hundreds of frogs held oratorios in a
neighbouring pond, rendering sleep impossible--and altogether it was
as damp and dreary a dwelling as anyone could wish to see; and a man
who had taken a dislike to existence could not have chosen a more
congenial abode.
One day George’s bearer went considerably further than the nearest
mud-walled village; he galloped post haste into Mangobad, and informed
Captain La Touche and his brother officers that his master was very
ill, in a raging fever, and “talking very strangely.”
“That’s it,” vociferated his chum, “I was afraid there was something
up. You notice he never sent in a _single_ brace of snipe, and he knows
what a boon they are.”
He and the station doctor set off at once, and brought the patient
in the next morning in a dhooly. He was still in a high fever, but
perfectly conscious and alive to his surroundings.
For days he had been racked with an uncontrollable longing to see Betty
only once, and to speak to her face to face--as vain a longing as that
of the wretched captive in a deep, dark dungeon, who languishes to see
the sun!
As Captain La Touche sat by him, and gazed at him anxiously, he opened
his eyes, and said in a low voice: “Joe, I would give half my life to
see her but for five minutes--and to speak to her face to face.”
Captain La Touche was exceedingly concerned, and subsequently told his
brother officers that it looked like a bad business, for Holroyd was
still delirious and wandering in his mind.
Ten days’ excellent nursing brought him round, and the doctor was most
assiduous in what he called “patching him up” in order that he might
be in time to meet the steamer. Nevertheless all George’s friends
were shocked at the change that such a short illness had made in his
appearance. He looked as if he had aged ten years in ten days; his eyes
were sunken, his cheeks hollow, and he was so weak and emaciated that,
according to one of his comrades, “he appeared to be walking about,
to save the expenses of his funeral,” and in this cheerful condition
he went down to Bombay, to accept the inevitable, and to receive his
bride.