MRS. HOLROYD DESIRES TO LOOK INTO THE PAST.
“He has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle.”
Alas! This gay butterfly life was not permanent! Before six months
had passed, Mrs. Holroyd had ceased to be the joy and delight of the
station. Before a year had elapsed, she had figuratively thrust a torch
into her own roof tree, and set Mangobad in a blaze.
The honeymoon had barely waned, before George Holroyd discovered that
he was married to an insanely jealous woman, with an ungovernable
temper, and an untrammelled tongue. He had seen her tear an ill-fitting
dress to shreds with the gestures of a maniac, he had seen her strike
her ayah, and stamp at himself. True, she had subsequently offered
a rupee to the ayah, and sobs and apologies to him, and that these
outbreaks were always followed by scenes almost equally trying--fits
of hysterical remorse, but the future looked gloomy, very gloomy.
Belle was not in love with her husband, brave, handsome, and honest
as he was. She would have (privately) jeered at the idea. She had a
vague notion that she had been in love once--years ago--that she was
constant to “a memory”--a gross mental deception; her first love was
with her still, and confronted her daily in the glass. Were the choice
given her to be torn from her husband or “Mossoo,” it would not have
been “Mossoo.” But he was a good-looking, presentable appendage, whose
polo playing and hurdle racing reflected credit on herself. Since
his marriage he had given up tennis and dancing, and to this she made
no objection, for it kept him somewhat aloof from ladies’ society.
She could not endure to see him speaking to another young woman. She,
herself, was to be admired by all; he was to admire no one.
As for George, he was woefully changed; he had become silent,
solitary, and perhaps a little cynical. He had done his utmost to be
a good husband to Belle, believing, in his folly, that she had been
desperately in love with him, but he was soon disabused of _this_
error. When at home, Belle was generally recruiting her exhausted
powers; she read, and yawned, but rarely talked; and, when abroad, she
never noticed her husband save to make jokes at his expense, and to
send him on her errands. Many a day when he returned from barracks,
fagged and weary, he found the bird flown, the nest empty, and the
bird’s absence a relief. “Mem Sahib bahar gaya.” The Mem Sahib was much
too nervous to ride; she did not care for driving along monotonous
roads, that led nowhere in particular. The splendid sunsets, the waving
fields of yellow rice and millet, the majestic clumps of forest trees
and picturesque rivers, with the cattle swimming homewards at sunset,
had no charms for her, nor the dazzling flight of green parrots, nor
the teak trees’ feathery flowers--nor the _tête-à-tête_ with George!
No, no, she much preferred to bowl down to the club to hear the latest
“gup,” display her dresses, and play tennis. And her husband spent his
time among the racket, and whist and billiard players, as if he were a
mere bachelor (Oh that he were!) At public and private entertainments,
his wife constantly made him the hero of her little stories, and the
butt of her malicious jokes. This he bore without wincing, but when she
levelled her shafts at others, he protested most emphatically.
One night they returned late from a large dinner party, where Belle
had made herself surprisingly disagreeable, and had shown more than a
glimpse of the cloven foot. Possibly something had irritated her--a
supposed slight, a tight shoe, or it might be, what Miss Dopping
would have called “just pure divilment.” George followed her into the
drawing-room, resolved to speak sternly, and to scotch the fire at once.
“Belle, what possessed you to-night?” he asked in sharp incisive tones,
unlike his usual manner.
“What do you mean?” she snapped, turning on him quickly.
“You told Mrs. Craddock, who has fiery hair, that you never trusted a
red-headed woman; they were invariably deceitful and ill-tempered.”
“Yes, quite true, so they are.”
“You told Colonel Scott that you despised all black regiments.”
“So I do.”
“You gave Mrs. Lundy, in polite words, the lie.”
“I did far worse than that!” exclaimed Belle triumphantly. “When
we were all in the drawing-rooms afterwards, and talking of the
fancy-ball, they appealed to me about Mrs. Mountain’s costume. I said
she was so large, and her face was so red, she might wear her usual
dress, with a paper frill round her neck, and go as a round of beef!
And only fancy! She turns out to be Mrs. Lundy’s _mother_! Laugh,
George, _do_ laugh.”
“No, certainly I shall not laugh. I am like Mr. Redmond. I never see a
joke after ten o’clock at night, even where there is one to see. I was
amazed at you this evening; you abused people’s friends, you abused my
regiment. If you cannot restrain your tongue, we won’t dine in public
again.”
“Who says so?” she demanded scornfully.
“I do,” he rejoined with resolute determination.
“Pooh! you can stay by yourself then and I shall go alone, and all the
better!” and she tossed her head with a gesture of defiance.
“If you do, it will be only once.”
“Why?”
“Because I shall send you home,” he answered with prompt sternness.
“Send me home. Ha! ha! ha! What a joke. To whom--to your mother?” and
she burst into a scream of laughter.
“No, to yours.”
“I would not go--I will never go.”
“We would soon see about that.”
“Yes, we would. I would shriek, and scream, and have to be carried to
the railway by force. I would make a scene at every station between
this and Bombay; and if you _did_ get me on board, I’d return in the
pilot boat. No, no. Husband and wife should never be separated. Nothing
but death should part them--nothing--but--death--shall--part--you and
me,” she concluded with laboured distinctness.
“Belle, you are talking nonsense; talking like a fool.”
“Am I? but I am not such a fool as to go to the hills, or to hateful
Ballingoole, and leave you here to flirt with Janie Wray.”
“Miss Wray!” he echoed; “I have scarcely spoken ten words to her in my
life.”
“You see her out with the hounds when I cannot look after you; you gave
her the brush--and I am told that she says you are the handsomest man
in the station. She had better not let me see her flirting with you,
that’s all,” she concluded excitedly.
“Miss Wray--it’s too bad to talk of her in this way! on my honour she
is no more to me than that picture on the wall.”
“Nor am I!” cried Belle fiercely. “Nor any woman! I don’t believe you
care a straw about me. I don’t believe, in spite of the letter you
wrote, that you ever loved me. Come----” suddenly walking up to him,
“be honest, answer me.”
“I married you--that is my answer,” he replied after a pause.
“True, and I had no money--my face was my fortune,” exclaimed Belle,
gazing at him thoughtfully. “And yet I sometimes think that you are
capable of _une grande passion_, of being desperately in love. Were you
ever in love before you met me? Was there ever any other girl, George?”
she exclaimed in a much sharper key. “George, speak! Why do you look so
white? There _was_ some one----”
“Do I ever ask to look into your past?” he interrupted impatiently.
“Then it’s _true_--you have admitted as much. Who is she? Where is she?
Have I seen her? Is she alive?”
Belle’s eyes flamed like two lamps as she seized his arm and shook it
violently.
“Ah--you won’t tell me! George, if I dreamt that you cared for her
still--I could kill her, do you hear? you had better keep us apart,
you know I have a high spirit,” and the lines of her face twitched
convulsively.
“I know you have a high temper,” calmly removing her hand. “And it is
rather late hours for heroics. If you will take _my_ advice, you will
leave my past alone--you will be more amiable at future entertainments,
and you will now go to bed.”
* * * * *
Belle was not very robust; according to her mother she had a great
spirit in a frail body, and according to Captain La Touche “her engines
were much too powerful for her frame.” Her folly in braving the sun,
and her life of ceaseless activity, began to tell; long before the hot
weather was heralded in by that most obnoxious of the feathered tribe,
“the brain fever bird.” She suffered from fever and ague--her face
became sallow, her eyes sunken, and her figure lost its roundness and
her thin red lips their smile.
The climate of India is said to be trying to the temper, but Belle’s
temper was trying to the whole station. Once the novelty of her new
house had worn off, she began to harry her domestics, with merciless
energy; she was unreasonable, unmethodical, and capricious; and
deplorably mean about small things. She foamed at the mouth over a lost
_jharun_ (duster), fined transgressors relentlessly, and in one great
gust of fury, dismissed the whole respectable black-bearded retinue,
without wages or character, but they gave her a fine character in the
bazaars, and she subsequently discovered that no good self-respecting
servant would engage with her, even for double wages. By the time she
had been six months in Mangobad her household troubles were the joke
of the place, but they were no joke to her husband; to him they were
a most tragic reality. Belle began her day at six o’clock by bursting
out of the house with a shriek at the milkman; then she had a painful
scene with the cook and his accounts, and the daily giving out of the
stores was looked upon as a sort of “forlorn hope.” Belle had always
been what Sally Dopping termed, very “near” in her ideas--save with
respect to outlay on her own little luxuries and personal adornment;
and this trait in her character had developed enormously of late, and
pressed sorely on her unlucky retainers; she weighed out each chittack
of butter, and each ounce of sugar, with her own fair hands; there was
no latitude allowed in the matter of “ghee,” and she made searching
enquiries after empty bottles, and bare bones.
Only the bravest dared to face the Mem Sahib! Every egg, every bottle
of lamp oil, every seer of gram, was figuratively fought over, and only
wrested from her and carried off after a severe action. Naturally,
it was but the very worst class of servants who would engage in her
service--the incapable, drunken, dishonest, or miserably poor. She soon
picked up sufficient of the vernacular to call them “idiots, pigs, and
devils,” and had a dreadful way of creeping unexpectedly about their
godowns, and pouncing on them when they were enjoying the soothing
“huka” at unlawful hours. Not a week passed without an explosion, and
dismissal; in six months she had thirty cooks; George’s life was
wretched, especially since Belle had been compelled to relinquish some
of her amusements, and had taken so fiercely to housekeeping; squalid
meals (an hour late), dusty rooms, insolent attendants, and the shrill
voice of the wife of his bosom, storming incessantly. Their little
dinner parties covered him with shame and confusion, and although
Belle, gaily dressed, talked and laughed vivaciously, and subsequently
sang, what talking and singing can appease a hungry man? Mysterious
soups, poisonous entrées--half full of cinders, a universal flavouring
of mellow ghee, and, on one immortal occasion, cod liver oil handed
about as a liqueur. Belle always declared that this particular “faux
pas” was the act of a diabolical “khitmatgar,” who did it for spite.
Be that as it may, it was but cold comfort to those unhappy guests
who had swallowed a glass of noxious medicine, as a kind of “chasse”
to a gruesome dinner! Mrs. Holroyd’s temper developed month by month.
Hasty speeches, furious retorts, combustible notes, dislocated various
friendships. She quarrelled with the chaplain about a hymn--with
Captain La Touche about a waltz--disputes over newspapers, tennis,
flowers, precedence, embroiled her with half the station, and here
she could not shift her sky, as in the good old days, when she roamed
about with her mother, and their lives were a series of hegiras. No,
it was now George’s unhappy lot to be apologist and peacemaker, to
interview angry and insulted ladies, and to draft copies of humble
letters--occasionally the effect of these epistles was minimised, by
Belle’s surreptitious postscript, “I don’t mean this letter in the
_least_, but George made me write it.”
Poor George! once (_only_ once) he got out his revolver, and handled
it meditatively; but no, what about his mother, and the regiment, and
Betty? No, to take his own life would be the act of a coward. A climax
came at last when the tennis tournament was in full swing. Belle played
with her usual skill and vigour, but at lawn tennis it is a fatal
mistake to become feverishly excited, and to lose your temper. Belle
lost hers, and also the ladies’ doubles. She fought desperately hard
for the singles, the general and friendly interest in her adversary
goading her to frenzy; after a most exciting match, she was beaten by
one point, and in a transport of disappointment and rage, launched an
anathema, and her racquet, at her opponent’s head.
The Mangobad community was kind. They talked of “a touch of the sun,”
and Belle was really laid up with intermittent fever. The doctor
conferred with George, and recommended Mrs. Holroyd a _complete_ change
of scene and a sea voyage! In short there was a universal feeling that
either she, or the rest of the population, would have to leave the
station--and she went.
Belle had a cousin in Melbourne, who (having never seen her) had
sent her more than one pressing invitation. This invitation was now
graciously accepted, and George escorted his wife and “Mossoo” down to
Calcutta, put them on board a P. and O. in charge of the captain, and
returned to Mangobad, a free man. Yes--for six months he was a free
man; and he hoped that his joy was not indecently manifest.
He shut up his house, and departed on a two months’ shooting trip with
Captain La Touche. It was quite like old times, and, by mutual consent,
they scrupulously avoided the remotest allusion to a certain absent
lady. They became two collarless vagabonds. They went into Thibet,
and had capital sport, and returned to the station at the very last
hour of their leave, sunburnt and satisfied, thirsting for regimental
soda-water, and the latest regimental news.
The travellers had scarcely entered the mess, and hardly exchanged
greetings with their friends, when an officious comrade rushed at
George open-mouthed, saying: “_Your wife is back_, arrived three days
ago; she only stayed a week in Australia.”
“What?” stammered George, turning pale beneath his tan.
“Yes--I saw her yesterday. She returned in the same steamer, and is
very fit. She loathed Melbourne, and said she knew you could not get on
without her.”
Alas! This was no hoax--it was painfully, pitifully true (and there
was a unanimous impression that Garwood might have kept his news till
George had had his breakfast). Belle spent exactly ten days with
her cousin--a strong-minded forcible woman, who told her some very
wholesome facts, and made no objection to her premature departure.
Belle detested Melbourne, and her relative--was afraid that George
might be flirting (Poor George! he had had a lesson for life)--gave
out that her health was completely restored, and that her husband was
miserable in her absence, and so took ship.
But her Australian trip was of benefit to Mrs. Holroyd in more ways
than one! She was more reasonable, more manageable, and more mild.
Long-suffering Mangobad noted the change with the deepest gratitude to
Belle’s unknown kinswoman, received the prodigal politely, and signed a
treaty of peace.