IN WHICH BELLE’S WISH IS FULFILLED.
“Covering with moss the dead’s unclosèd eye
The little red-breast teacheth charity.”
Betty almost ran down the footpath, her feet shod with indignation,
and refused her companion’s proffered arm with a sharp gesture, that
was nearer akin to passion than politeness. At first she hurried along
bravely enough, but afterwards more slowly and painfully. What are
bronze shoes, and silk stockings, among rocks and broken branches, and
overflowing water-courses? One of her feet was badly cut, her hair had
been blown adrift by the stormy rain that beat her and buffeted her
so mercilessly. At last she was compelled to cling to the arm she
had previously scorned; for as she stumbled forward in the wake of
the blinking lantern and shivering syce, furious gusts of wind came
sweeping down between Cheena and Diopatha, and threatened to carry
her off her balance, and to extinguish the light. The pair made no
attempt to speak, for their voices would have been lost amid the crash
of the thunder, and the hollow roar of the torrents, as they tumbled
tumultuously down the ravines, and poured into the lake with the noise
of an explosion. Amid the unchanging fury of the storm, there were
intervals of blinding light, alternating with spells of utter darkness.
Once, in a comparatively sheltered spot, Betty halted to twist up her
hair. As she did so, a dazzling white flash lit up the dark surrounding
hills--the grey sheets of rain pattering into the lake--the streaming
path--themselves.
There was a momentary lull, as if the raving, screaming wind was taking
breath, and Betty said tremulously, but with perfect distinctness:
“George, to-night it must be _good-bye_ between us; you will understand
that it cannot be otherwise.”
“Yes,” he returned hoarsely, “I could never ask you to run the risk of
such another scene. It must be as you say--God help us!”
A second flash, bright as day, illumined his face; it was ashen; and in
the haggard eyes so near to hers there was a look of wistfulness and
despair--such an agonised look, as the eyes of the dying wear when they
take leave of those they love best, and pass away, alone, into that
undiscovered country.
In a moment all was black again, and once more the pair resumed that
struggle onwards, arm in arm, staggering against the wind, and wrapped
in the darkness and the silence of their own thoughts. After half an
hour’s scrambling and groping, and climbing of slippery paths that ran
with water, bruised, drenched, beaten and breathless, they arrived at
their destination, and were vociferously announced by the barking of
half a dozen curs of high and low degree.
Mr. Redmond always retired late, and was still sitting up;
reading--no--not a treatise on jurisprudence, but a French novel;
he came in his dressing-gown and spectacles, and opened the door in
person, and beheld his niece in a soaking evening dress, bareheaded,
and almost barefoot; and Holroyd looking ghastly, with the rain pouring
off his cap and moustache.
“What--what does this mean?” he demanded in a voice in which anger
and amazement struggled for mastery. “Do you wish to murder the
girl--sir--that you bring her out in such a plight on such a night?”
“I am more sorry than I can say, but I could not help it--I----”
“Come in, come in, man alive! and don’t stand dripping there, come in
and explain yourself!”
“Uncle Bernard,” said Betty, taking off her cloak and throwing back her
wringing hair. “He cannot explain--Belle and I have had a quarrel.”
“A quarrel about what?” turning the lamp full on her colourless face.
Dead silence.
“There has been more than a quarrel! There is something in the
background. Holroyd, you don’t leave my house till you explain the
whole business.”
“Oh, uncle, do not keep him,” expostulated Betty. “Don’t you see how
wet he is?”
“Then _you_ shall tell me, run away at once, and put on dry clothes.
I shall not go to bed till I have come to the bottom of this affair!
What will every one say when they hear that your cousin turned you out
of doors in the middle of such a night? Holroyd, in common Christian
charity I must give you something to drink. I don’t want to have your
death on my head, but mind you, I have not done with you. Have some old
brandy, neat?”
“No, thank you, I must go,” and he glanced at Betty.
“Yes,” she said, approaching him quickly as she spoke. “You must
forgive Belle; she will be very sorry; forgive her as a favour to _me_.
Remember,” she added, almost in a whisper, “what you promised me last
Christmas. _Good-bye_.” Her lips trembled, whilst her eyes dismissed
him.
“Good-bye,” he echoed, in a husky voice, wringing her hand as he spoke.
In another second he was gone--gone without a word or glance towards
Mr. Redmond, and was hurrying down the hill at breakneck speed.
“Must I tell you, Uncle Bernard?” said Betty, when, after a short
interval, she returned to the sitting-room, in a long, white, woollen
gown, and with her hair hanging over her shoulders.
“Yes, you must tell me everything, and you must drink this cherry
brandy.”
“I would so much rather not do one or the other.”
“And you will have to do _both_.”
“Then, Uncle Bernard, remember you make me tell what I have never told
to a soul,” and her eyes flashed at him through tears of passionate
pain. “But you stand in the place of my father.”
“I do, and you stand to me in the place of a daughter. Begin what you
have to say--at once.”
“I--I--how can I begin?” she said, shading her face with her hands. “I
knew George Holroyd very well three years ago. I was a good deal at
Bridgetstown with his mother and sister, and--and--” she hesitated.
“And he made love to you,” continued her uncle bluntly.
“He could not marry, for he had no money; he was supporting his mother
and sister, and he had but little besides his pay.”
“I am surprised he did not ask you to share _that_!” sneered her
listener.
“No, no, he would not bind me to any promise, but he said that if his
prospects improved--he would write.”
“And he never did. Oh, oh--I see it all!”
“Yes, he wrote and enclosed the letter to Mrs. Redmond, but Mrs.
Redmond wanted him to marry her own daughter. She scratched out my
name--and gave the letter to Belle.”
“What!” shouted Mr. Redmond, rising to his feet, “what madwoman’s
nonsense is this?”
“It is true: the letter seemed to apply to either of us. Belle thought
he liked her--she hated Noone, she was glad to get away from it--at any
price,” she gasped, in short and breathless sentences.
“And _you_ paid the price?”
To this question Betty gave no answer or sign, beyond a slight
quivering of the lips.
“Well, go on,” continued the Collector imperiously.
“I never knew the truth, until Mrs. Redmond was dying, and then she
told me all. Belle went out to Bombay in complete ignorance, and George
met her, and married her.”
“The fool! the maniac! the great idiot!” cried Mr. Redmond, throwing up
his hands. “He must have been out of his mind.”
“He believed that he was acting for the best,” said Betty with a kind
of proud severity, “and I think he did right; what would have become
of Belle, destitute and friendless? He has always kept his secret till
now, but she opened his dispatch box, and read her mother’s letter; she
never had a suspicion of the truth till to-night.”
“And the effect of her discovery?”
“Was to turn me instantly out of her house, but I know she will be
sorry to-morrow--she always is.”
“Well--well--well,” turning about and pacing the room, with his hands
clasped behind him under his dressing-gown. “I am fifty years of age,
and this story--this extraordinary story--transcends everything in my
experience either at home or abroad. Poor Holroyd, unfortunate devil!
Betty, you will never cross her threshold, and never speak a word to
that termagant again.”
“No, nor to him either, uncle; we agreed to-night that we would be
strangers for the future.”
“Oh, ha, hum,” stroking his chin; “well I daresay you are right, you
can’t cut a woman and know her husband.”
“And now, Uncle Bernard, I am so very, very tired, you will let me go,
won’t you?”
She looked haggard and completely exhausted, her face was as white as
her gown.
The horror and shame of Belle’s outbreak, that terrible walk through
rain and darkness, the ordeal of having to lay bare her secret to her
uncle, had been too much, even for her fortitude.
“Come and kiss me, Betty. I declare you are a good girl, you are a true
Redmond, and have a fine moral backbone. Poor Betty, you have had a
hard part to play.”
She approached and laid her lips softly on his forehead--lips that were
icy cold; she was so grave, and pale, and so utterly unlike herself,
that her uncle was slightly awed, and suffered her to depart in
silence.
Mr. Redmond still sat up, and actually lit a cigar to soothe his
ruffled feelings, and to re-arrange his thoughts.
“That old Redmond woman ought to have been transported. Supposing Betty
had got the letter all right, and come out and married Holroyd? Well,
he liked him, he used to be a capital fellow, but as it was, Betty
could do far better, and marry someone in his own service.”
Poor Holroyd! he had made him his confidante about Hammond too. Yes,
that was certainly an awkward mistake. It could not be possible that
Betty had still--no--no, out of the question. However, she was a
sensible girl, they had better be strangers in future, but he himself
was not going to give up George’s acquaintance (man-like, he considered
that a woman could easily make sacrifices that were disagreeable and
unnecessary for him). They could still meet and dine at the club; they
could go out shooting together. As to George’s wife, to relinquish
_her_ society was no hardship.
Meanwhile Captain Holroyd was re-turning homewards with headlong
speed; he had now no girl companion to guide and protect, and as for
himself, he did not care. At first he determined to go to an hotel, or
the club, for the remainder of the night, but on second thoughts, he
changed his mind. He had never been one to send the family linen to
the public wash. He would endure to the end--and this was almost the
end. It required a man with a more hopeful buoyant nature than his to
resist sinking under the weight of his surroundings. He would abandon
the struggle once for all. The life he led was not the existence of a
self-respecting human being--it was the life of a dog. He would offer
Belle a tempting allowance, leaving himself just sufficient for bare
necessaries; he would tell her that he could endure her society no
longer, and that she must accept it, and go--go home. If not, if she
made a scandal, as she had once threatened, he would sell out, and join
some exploring party in Africa, Australia, or Central America. Part
they must; he was past the days of piteous protestations, caresses,
and hysterics, and he was about to shape the rest of his life in
another form. Belle and her mother had ruined his happiness; he was an
embittered, disheartened, truly miserable man. All his best friends
could give him was pity and sympathy. As to what “might have been,” he
dared not trust himself to glance at it. He would free himself from
Belle, and put half the world between himself and Betty.
With this stern resolution in his mind, he found himself once more
at home--the door stood wide open, the lamp was flaring in the
drawing-room, and that apartment was precisely as he had left it--with
the overturned chair, and torn photograph, lying on the ground--but
empty. Where was Belle? The house seemed unnaturally quiet; he looked
into her bedroom, a pair of slippers lay in the middle of the floor, as
if they had been hastily kicked off. He called; there was no reply; he
searched, he took the lantern and went outside; the rain was abating,
for it was near dawn. He held the light close to the ground, and saw
the fresh footprints of two small shoes; they went up the hill, not
down. In an instant the truth flashed upon him. In a fit of remorse,
Belle had followed them and gone by the short cut--the “closed” road.
He seized the lantern, now burning very faintly, and started at once in
pursuit; for more than a mile he followed the pathway, now ascending,
now descending, sometimes between rocks, sometimes between trees,
sometimes along the bare edge of a sheer naked precipice; and then
the light went out, but as a faint grey glimmer came creeping through
the mists, he was able to make his way on at a steady pace, though
his heart thumped loudly against his ribs, and his nerves were strung
to their utmost tension, for a chill shadow of apprehension seemed to
stalk beside him! Suddenly, turning a sharp corner, he was brought to
a standstill, by a ghastly break in the narrow track. The hill above
had slipped down five hundred feet, carrying with it, rocks, trees and
pathway; loose showers of little stones were still trickling lakewards,
and as the dawn came stealing over the crest of Cheena, and penetrated
through the dispersing clouds, George was aware of a small object, a
dog--shivering miserably on the brink of the gaping chasm, or running
to and fro, with every token of anguish and despair.
Belle’s wish had been accomplished. “Mossoo” survived her.
THE END.
PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES;
AND GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, W.C.