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Title: Interference, Vol. 3 (of 3)
A novel
Author: B. M. Croker
Release date: November 23, 2023 [eBook #72210]
Language: English
Original publication: London: F. V. White & Co, 1891
Credits: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTERFERENCE, VOL. 3 (OF 3) ***
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.
CHAPTER II.
“THE HONEYMOON.”
“Face joys a costly mask to wear,
’Tis bought with pangs long nourishèd
And rounded to despair.”
“On the 5th instant, at the Cathedral, Bombay, by the Rev. Erasmus
Jones, George Holroyd, Lieutenant, Her Majesty’s Royal Musketeers, only
son of the late George Holroyd, and grandson of Sir Mowbray Holroyd, of
Rivals Place, county Durham, to Isabelle Felicité, daughter of the late
Fergus Redmond, grand-niece of Lord Bogberry, and great-grand-niece of
the Marquis of Round Tower. By Telegram.”
Mrs. Redmond herself had composed this high-sounding announcement, and
had handed it to Colonel Calvert, with instructions to insert the
date, and not to trust it to Holroyd, but to see to it himself--perhaps
in her secret heart she feared that George might modify her magnificent
composition.
The wedding was strictly private, and if the bridegroom looked haggard
and pre-occupied, the bride was both blooming and beaming. The Calverts
and Miss Gay were the only guests, and after the ceremony, the happy
pair went direct to the railway station, and departed on a tour up
country. They visited Jeypore, Ajmir, Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow. Belle
liked the bustle, the constant change, the novelty of her surroundings,
the admiring eyes of other passengers, and the luxury of having every
wish most carefully studied. But she did not much appreciate Indian
sights and Indian scenery. She gave them but a very cursory notice,
her attention being chiefly centred on her fellow travellers. It was
the flood-tide of the globe-trotting season--English, Americans,
French, and Australians, were scattered over the land in hundreds,
“doing India,” from a certain point of view, and believing that
when they had seen the Taj at Agra, the burning ghaut at Benares,
the snows at Darjeeling, a snake charmer, and a fakeer, they were
henceforth qualified authorities on the Eastern question! The hotels
were crammed, the proprietors reaping a golden harvest, and often at
their wits’ end to find quarters for their guests. Belle enjoyed the
numerous and varied society she met at the table d’hôte, her roving,
challenging dark eyes daily wandered among what were, to her, entirely
new types. There was the purse-proud, tubby little man, who scorned
the letter H and expected to be served as promptly and as obsequiously
as if he were in his own house; who roared and stormed in English at
amazed Mahomedan khitmatgars, who did not understand either him or
his wants. There were the people who entered into conversation right
and left, and cheerfully discussed plans and places, the people who
never opened their mouths but to receive their forks--or knives; the
people who ate everything, the people who barely tasted a morsel--and
the delicate couple from Calcutta who had brought their own cook! The
American party, mostly wearing pince-nez, bright, brisk, agreeable,
seeing the world at rail-road speed and pleased with all they saw,
sleeping in trains, eating in “ticca” gharries, _en route_ to some
sight, and writing up their diaries at every spare moment. The English
family--comprised of a father collecting facts, a mother collecting
pottery, two pretty daughters, a valet and a maid--to whom time and
money were no object, and who were a perfect fortune to the hawkers who
haunted the hotel verandahs. There was the gentleman from New Zealand,
who was surprised at nothing but the gigantic size of the cockroaches,
and the ruddy-cheeked youth from Belfast, who was surprised at
everything, and who half expected to see tigers sporting on the Apollo
Bunder or chasing the Bombay trams; also the two cautious ladies, who
brought their hand-bags to the table, and read guide books between the
courses. Moreover, there was the handsome rich young man who had come
out to shoot big game, and discoursed eloquently of the delights of
the Terai, and the merits of explosive bullets, and shikar elephants,
and was not unlikely to be “brought down” himself by the bright eyes
of an Australian girl, who played off Japan against the jungles. Last,
but not least, the seasoned Anglo-Indian, passing through to his
district or his regiment up country, who spoke the language glibly,
helped his fellow creatures to make their wants understood, and seemed
absolutely at home with his trusty bearer, his bedding, and his tiffin
basket--and being well known to the hotel baboo, and so to speak on his
adopted heath, secured, without a second’s demur, the best room, and
the best attention. Many of these travellers were encountered by the
Holroyds over and over again, and Belle, in her lively way, had devised
nicknames for most of them; nor did they themselves pass unnoticed. No
one suspected them of being newly married, for Belle, though smartly
dressed and remarkably handsome, was no young girl; nor were she and
her husband selfishly absorbed in one another, to the exclusion of
ordinary mortals. They were known among their companies as “the lady
with the poodle,” and “the man with the headache,” for George looked
as if he were a continual martyr to that distressing affliction. He
was unmistakably an officer--the lively girl who had been in Japan
declared she guessed it by his boots--and the couple were supposed to
be residents taking a little cold weather tour, _à la_ Darby and Joan.
This mistake was intolerable to Belle, and she pursued one harmless
lady with undying animosity, because as they were shuffling out to
Amba, on the same elephant, she had innocently remarked:
“I suppose this sort of a ride is no novelty to you--you are quite
accustomed to India.”
Belle, whose temper was precarious, and who was now in a deadly fright,
and consequently inclined to be cross, said snappishly:
“Pray _how_ long do you suppose I have been married?”
“Well, say ten years----”
“Say ten days,” rejoined the bride, with laconic severity.
“Oh my! I _am_ vexed. Well, I hope you’ll excuse me;” but Belle did
not do anything so generous, and cut her dead when they subsequently
met at Laurie’s Hotel, Agra. The moon was full and, as a natural
consequence, so was the hotel; for what sight so renowned as the Taj
by moonlight? Belle went over the fort, grumbling and reluctant, in
the wake of a conscientious guide; the day was warm and there was
far too much to see! The Motee Musjid, the Jasmin Tower, the dining
halls, durbar halls, tilting yards, court yards, and baths--the
combined works of Akbar and Shahjehan. Her taste was more for the
horrible than the beautiful, and when she was taken from marble halls
above, to dark dungeons and underground passages below, and when she
had crawled, torch in hand, through a hole in the wall, and seen
with her own eyes the secret chamber where women of the palace were
strangled and thrown into the Jumna, she expressed herself as deeply
interested and gratified. The tomb across the river was duly visited,
and then the Taj. Yes. She admired it! but it aroused her enthusiasm
in a much fainter degree than the contents of a shop of gold and
silver embroidery, although the sight that bursts on the traveller
as he enters the great gateway, and catches the first glimpse of
the approach, surmounted by the famous dome and minarets, is surely
unsurpassed. The Taj, to translate its name, is “the crown” of every
building in the world, and it is to be regretted that Shahjehan did not
live to carry out his intention of building a similar tomb for himself
in black marble at the other side of the river, connecting the two by a
marble bridge.
Belle agreed to a second visit by moonlight, because, as she assured
herself, “it was a thing to say she had seen,” but the admiration the
Tomb evoked, the intent look on men’s faces, the tears in the women’s
eyes, merely filled her with amazement and derision. She praised the
delicate Italian inlaid work, and the lace-like marble screens, and
tried her not particularly sweet voice, under the echoing dome, with
a shrill roulade that considerably startled her unprepared audience.
At eleven o’clock at night she again found herself in the Taj gardens;
“much too early,” she grumbled, as she seated herself on a bench
half-way between the Taj and the entrance. “The other people won’t be
here for an hour.” It was evidently “other people” she had come to see.
George made no remark; he stood behind her with his arms folded. He had
always secretly worshipped the beautiful in nature and art--an Indian
sunset in the rains, a chain of lofty snow-clad peaks at sunrise, a
fair landscape bathed in moonlight, appealed at once to his taste,
and the building before him, with its pearl-white dome rising into
the dark blue starry sky, the stately grace of this crown of love,
the beauty of this perfect monument to a woman’s memory, crept into
his senses and sank into his soul. The moon was so bright, the air so
clear, that he could distinguish the fretwork, and the heavy-headed
lilies around the basement of the tomb, and this garden, in which “the
light of the Harem” had lain for eighteen years--whilst thousands of
workmen laboured, aye, and died for her fame--was truly a fitting
setting for so pure a gem of art, with its tall trees and paved walks,
its fountains and fish ponds, its masses of yellow roses and groves of
fragrant orange blossoms, now filling the air with their perfume. What
a paradise for lovers, thought George, an ideal spot for whispered vows
this exquisite Eastern night! But what had _he_ to do with love? He
was a married man, and in his heart, there was not one spark of love
for the smart little lady, with the dog on her knee, who was his own,
his wife, his other self for evermore, who had a right to be beside
him, and to share his lot, as long as they both should live. Esteem he
might give her, respect and a certain kind of admiration, and possibly
affection; but love--Never! Meanwhile it was his most urgent duty to
disguise the truth, and sharp as Belle was, she never once guessed it.
Who could be more attentive than George? Her merest hint was caught at,
the best carriages and best rooms were secured for her everywhere in
advance by telegram; he protected her from rain or heat, from draught
or dust, as if she were made of wax. And he had given her most lovely
presents. Such a diamond ring and such a pair of earrings! If poor
Maria Finny could only see them she would die--die of envy, hatred and
malice. His affection was not demonstrative but practical--and, as
such, was appreciated and preferred.
As George’s sombre eyes fell upon his companion, he noticed that she
was now gazing at the Taj in an entirely different attitude, with an
air of rapt, absorbed meditation. Ah, it had grown on her at last, as
it did on every one; she had even dislodged “Mossoo,” who was hunting
frogs, with all the zeal of his nation.
“Well, Belle, a penny for your thoughts?” he asked eagerly.
“Oh,” rousing herself to look at him. “Well, I was wondering, if I
could get any curling pins here? and do you know, that I have been
thinking seriously about that blue and silver dress front; perhaps
I ought to take the pink one after all--you remember the one at the
corner shop; there was more stuff for the body. What do you say, dear?”
Here was a companion with whom to gaze on earth’s loveliness! No, no,
Belle had, as she boasted, no sentiment about her; she did not care for
past greatness,--the marble glories of Shahjehan, nor the red granite
courts of Akbar. She much preferred the present age, a brisk drive back
to the hotel, and a nice little hot supper; yes, she would rather have
mulled claret and cutlets, than moonlight and marble!
“Have _both_ if you like,” returned George after a momentary silence,
“and had we not better be making a start?”
“Both!” rising to her feet. “Oh, you dear, good, generous George,”
taking his arm as she spoke. “If you are quite sure that I am not too
extravagant, for there is something else I want.”
“What is that?”
“A present for Betty; you know how good she has been to me; she really
worked like a slave to get me ready, and I would like to send her
something pretty; it need not cost much, but she has no nice things, no
generous George to give her presents,” glancing up coquettishly into
his face. How white he looked--or was it the moon? “You know what a
dull life she leads--any little pleasure, any little surprise----”
“She won’t be dull when she is Mrs. Moore,” he interrupted sharply.
“I shall tell you a great secret, that no one knows but me; she will
never marry Ghosty, never. She was quite angry with me, when I teased
her. She declares she will never marry any one, and if she keeps her
word, as I hope she will--for who is there to marry at Ballingoole?--it
will make my mind _so_ easy about poor mamma!”
As Belle made this sweet, unselfish remark, they had reached the
entrance, and whilst she was coaxing “Mossoo” into the carriage, George
turned away, ostensibly to take one last look at the Taj as it appeared
framed by the great gateway, but it was not of the Taj that he was
thinking. Although his eyes were resting on a vision of a dazzling
white dome and minarets, he was a prey to tormenting speculation; he
was asking himself a startling question. Could Mrs. Redmond have lied
to him? Or was Betty’s speech merely a girl’s hypocritical repudiation
of a lover. Who was the most likely to speak the truth, Mrs. Redmond or
Betty?
As Belle and her husband drove rapidly back towards the cantonments,
with “Mossoo” extended on the front seat of the landau, they were
unusually silent; not one word was spoken about their recent
expedition--they seemed buried in their own thoughts.
_She_ was busily engaged in mentally making up the pink and silver
satin, and _he_ was thinking, that if what Belle had just told him was
true--as true as she appeared to believe--he never would have married
her!
Two days later, Mrs. Holroyd was sitting in the hotel verandah,
surrounded by jewellers, their wares displayed temptingly in the
invariable manner on Turkey red.
“Well! what about that present?” enquired her husband, as he discovered
her. “Get something good. Will two hundred rupees do?”
“Two hundred! I was thinking of fifty. What a lavish, extravagant
fellow you are; you will ruin yourself if I don’t look after you.”
But she accepted the sum, in spite of her pretty protestations.--George
was beginning to know what these protestations were worth!--Belle
carefully selected a delicate gold bangle, and exhibited it on her own
wrist, with much complacency.
“You are not going to give her _that_, are you?” he enquired with
secret dismay.
“Yes, I thought of it at first; it would almost match one you sent her,
but really it is too much to give her, and on second thoughts,” with a
playful air, “don’t you think it looks very well on _me_?”
“Yes, yes, of course it does; leave it where it is,” he said with eager
acquiescence, “you must keep it yourself.”
Anything was better than sending Betty a second bangle, and Belle, the
munificent, the grateful, the honourable, chose for her cousin--when
her husband was not present--a simple brooch, value thirty rupees,
though she told him it cost eighty--and pocketed the balance.
From Agra, the Holroyds went to Cawnpore--melancholy Cawnpore!--with
its dusty, glaring roads, grim barracks and tragic history. The
garrulous guide who drove them round, lolled at his ease half into
the carriage, preferring the _rôle_ of _raconteur_ to coachman,
leaving the horses chiefly to themselves; but no doubt, they knew the
too familiar weary rounds, from Nana Sahib’s ruinous house, to the
entrenchments--the Memorial Church--the massacre ghaut--and the well.
The full details of the tragedy had a horrible fascination for Belle,
and despite her husband’s continual interruptions and denials, she
would hear all; and the guide, for once, had a listener entirely after
his own heart; but the Indian mid-day sun, and Indian atrocities
were too much for this excitable traveller with a lurid imagination.
A climax arrived, when she stood gazing at the angel over the well,
that exquisite embodiment of sorrow and peace--which the guide glibly
assured her was “the work of ‘Mackitty,’ the same man who had built the
Taj, at Agra.” As she gazed with twitching lips, and working eyebrows,
she said, “You call it a lovely face, George! Not at all. To me, it
is not a face of sorrow, but a face of cold, undying vengeance. Yes,
vengeance,” she added, raising her voice to a scream and glaring at the
guide with a wild flicker in her eyes, “why don’t you keep a supply of
natives here for us who come on pilgrimage? I know what _I_ would do to
them, with my own hands.”
She looked so odd and excited, that the old soldier was completely
cowed, and ceased to relate how “he and Havelock” had marched to the
relief of Cawnpore. This handsome lady had a strange face, she was
muttering to herself, and gnawing her handkerchief, as she lay back
on the carriage cushions, and she had passionately tossed his humble
offering--a bit of yew from the site of the house of massacre--far away
into the powdery white road. He had not even the presence of mind to
ask for a whiskey peg, when George paid him off at the station, but he
whispered confidentially as he pocketed his rupees:
“I’ve seen ’em in hysterics, and I’ve seen ’em crying, but I never saw
one take on like _her_ before,” indicating Belle with his horny thumb.
“She _would_ draw me on, you see--and all them times is real to me--I
was in ’em, and my words has worked on her feelings, them and the sun
has done it; keep her cool and quiet, and she may come all right in
time for the mail train.”
But was it the sun? A terrible thought, a sickening dread, occurred to
George; was there not a gleam of insanity in those fiery red eyes that
encountered his, in the dim light of the waiting-room? He and her ayah
applied ice and eau-de-cologne to her head, and kept her in a still,
dark room in complete quiet, and this regimen wrought a speedy cure. By
the following morning Belle declared herself ready to go on at once, to
go anywhere, and they proceeded to Lucknow. The grey shell-shattered
walls of the Residency, the scene of her countrymen and women’s heroic
resistance, had no more interest for Mrs. Holroyd than the Taj. The
Silver Bazaar and the cavalry band at the “Chutter Munzil,” were far
more to her taste, not to speak of a screaming farce at the Mahomed
Bagh Theatre. At length they turned their faces towards Mangobad, and
as the train steamed out of Lucknow Station, George, as he carefully
arranged Belle’s pillows and rugs, and books and fans, breathed a deep
sigh of thankfulness and relief--_At any rate the honeymoon was over._
CHAPTER III.
A NEW LIFE.
The Holroyds arrived at Mangobad, with unexpected punctuality, and
Belle was in raptures with her new home--her _own_ house--a spacious,
well-situated bungalow, replete with every comfort. There was a German
piano, a pony and cart, a cheval glass, a sewing machine, new jail
carpets and matting, pretty curtains and furniture, and ornaments, a
verandah filled with plants, and birds; and a tribe of respectable
black-whiskered servants, with unimpeachable “chits” awaiting her good
pleasure.
Truly nothing had been forgotten; this bungalow had undoubtedly been
fitted up by a lover.
Belle danced about, and clapped her hands, gesticulated, and ran from
room to room like a child of six. Little did she guess that all these
delightful, thoughtful preparations--had been made for another person.
For several days after her arrival, she was excessively busy, unpacking
and shaking out her dresses and beautifying the drawing-room, with
rapid and tasteful fingers. A palm in this corner, a screen in that,
a graceful drapery here, a bow of ribbon there, photographs, fans and
cushions abounded--in a short time the room was transformed as if by
magic, but its mistress’s zeal was evanescent. Once a thing was done
there was an end of it; the palms might wither, the draperies gather
dust, for all she noted. She detested sustained effort. However,
everything was in its pristine freshness, when her visitors began to
make their appearance.
Captain La Touche was naturally the first to call upon his friend’s
bride. He drove up in his dog-cart, dressed in his most recent Europe
suit, and brimming over with curiosity and _bonhomie_.
Mem Sahib gave “salaam” and he was shown into the drawing-room, and
there waited for a considerable time, whilst he heard sounds of someone
skirmishing with drawers and wardrobe doors, in the next apartment.
He was full of pleasant anticipations of a girl of nineteen, tall and
slim, with beautiful, Irish grey eyes, even in her cheap, blurred
photograph she had a sweet face!
But who was _this_? that pulled back the purdah and came tripping into
the room. A pretty little brunette, with a Frenchified dress and an
artificial smile. He rose and bowed, waiting expectantly for another
figure--that was surely yet to come.
“I know you so very well by name,” said Belle, offering a pair of tiny
(somewhat bony) hands. “My husband is always talking of Captain La
Touche.”
Then this was the bride; he was in the presence of Mrs. Holroyd!
At first he was so utterly confounded, that he could only sit down
and stare into the crown of his hat. Belle attributed his evident
embarrassment to the dazzling effect of her own charms, and immediately
set to work to converse in her gayest strain, in order to put him at
his ease. She was the first person who had ever thought it necessary
to attempt this feat with Captain La Touche! As she chatted with her
usual fluency, he listened and looked. Truly, this is no shy girl of
nineteen, but a woman ten years older, with a knowledge of the world,
and a pleasant confidence in her own powers. He noted the elaborate
elegance of her dress, the vivid beauty of her dark, animated face;
but, despite their long lashes, her eyes had a hard expression, and her
thin red lips spoke of cruelty, and temper.
However, he dissembled his feelings (like the immortal stage ruffian),
and talked and flattered and laughed, in his most irresistible company
manner.
Belle, on her side, was agreeably impressed by her suave and
good-looking visitor. She remembered that he had given them a handsome
wedding present, and was inclined to be more cordial than brides
usually are, towards their husband’s bachelor friends. He discoursed of
the station, she of her passage out. He asked how she liked her house,
and she enquired if there were any balls coming off, and if the ladies
of Mangobad were young and pretty!
“You must judge for yourself,” he returned diplomatically, “you have
brought us out one young lady, Miss Gay--Miss Rose Gay.”
“Yes, and she ought to be called Miss Nosegay,” returned Belle smartly.
“You never saw such a feature out of _Punch_.”
“Is she, then, not pretty?” he enquired with arched brows.
“Pretty, poor girl!” throwing up her hands, “her face is so hideous
that I am sure it must hurt her!” and she laughed, and evidently
expected her visitor to do the same, but he merely smiled and said, “At
any rate she is very clever.”
“Of course she is, like all ugly people; she is _said_ to be very
clever and good-natured; for my part, I loathe good-natured girls.”
Mrs. Holroyd was outspoken, and not very amiable; this sharp tongue
might prove a dangerous element in a small station. Presently he rose
and took his leave. As he was quitting the room, his eye fell on a
large photograph of Betty. Belle noticed his glance, and hastening to
take it up, said:
“Oh, you are looking at my cousin--my dearest friend; she is a darling,
not a beauty, as you may observe, but quite charming. I wish you could
see her. I wish she was here.” Captain La Touche sincerely echoed
the wish, as he bowed himself out, and walked down the hall. He had
never been so completely mystified in all his life. His friend had
distinctly told him, that he was going to marry Betty--and who was
Betty’s substitute?
On the steps of the porch he met George, who had just ridden home from
the ranges.
“I see you have been making your salaams,” said he with well-affected
nonchalance.
“Yes,” acquiesced his comrade. But for the life of him he could not
utter another word. He looked hard at his friend, his friend looked
hard at him, and, from what he read in Holroyd’s eyes, he dared not
ask the question that was burning on his tongue, so he got into his
dog-cart in silence, and drove himself away.
Mrs. Holroyd’s next visitor was the Collector, her namesake, Mr.
Redmond. She knew that he was a rich, eccentric widower, just the
sort of person that would repay a little cultivation, just the sort of
person to invite her out to camp, and to give her diamonds and ponies,
for was he not Betty’s uncle? She intended to make great capital out
of her cousin, stand in her place and stroke his grey hair, and smooth
his withered cheek, and call him “Uncle Bernard,” but all these pretty
little schemes were projected before she had _seen_ Mr. Redmond. He
was one of the relatives with whom old Brian had quarrelled most
rancorously, and his offer to provide for his brother’s orphan had
been rudely scorned. In those days Mrs. Redmond was alive, and as she
was not very enthusiastic about her husband’s niece, the matter had
dropped. But now Mr. Redmond paid an early visit to the bride, not so
much to do her honour, as to enquire about Betty. Bernard Redmond,
Esq., C.S., was a tall, square-shouldered man, with grizzled, sandy
hair, a somewhat saturnine expression, and a masterful individuality.
He was intellectual and deeply read, open-handed, hospitable and
eccentric, was well aware that he was considered “peculiar,” and took
an unaffected delight in acting up to his reputation. In spite of his
so-called odd opinions, he was extremely popular, for he gave a good
dinner, and unimpeachable wine, played quite a first-class rubber,
and was a sound authority on horseflesh. Mr. Redmond brooked no
contradiction, was autocratic, and extraordinarily outspoken--traits
that grew upon him year by year, and were fostered and nourished at
Mangobad, where he ruled not only the district, but the station, and
was to all intents and purposes its “uncrowned king.”
Belle’s pretty smiles and speeches, her graceful attitudes, and waving
hands, were absolutely wasted on this cynical person with the cold grey
eyes. He listened patiently to her chatter, and her views of life,
mentally exclaiming “Good Lord! What a fool this woman is!” for the
tone of her conversation jarred on him considerably; there was a great
deal too much about Mrs. George Holroyd. Nevertheless he received a
glowing description of his niece, in which description Belle painted
herself as Betty’s adviser, sister, and benefactress, and then he put
one or two somewhat sharp questions--questions are a natural weapon in
malignant hands.
“I remember your father,” he said: “he died when I was a youngster,
about eight and twenty years ago. I suppose you were quite an infant at
that time.”
“Quite,” she returned somewhat sharply.
“Betty is nineteen,” he continued; “she has two hundred a year; pray,
what becomes of her income?”
“I cannot tell,” faltered Belle. “My mother knows” (she truly did).
“And I gather that she is at Noone acting as your mother’s sick nurse?”
“She _lives_ with mamma,” replied Belle, reddening.
“Ha--Hum!” rubbing his chin reflectively. Then putting on his glasses,
and staring round, “I should not have known this house.”
“No, I suppose not,” complacently. “Pray, what do you think of my room?”
“Shall I really tell you what I think. Eh, honestly and without humbug?”
“Please do,” prepared for some charming compliment.
“I think it just like a bazaar, with all these pictures, and ribbons,
and cushions, and fans. I cannot help looking for the tickets, and
expecting to hear you ask me to put into a raffle.”
“Mr. Redmond,” exclaimed Belle, intensely affronted. “It is very
evident that you have not been in England for some years, and possibly
then you may not have been in a _drawing-room_, or else I believe you
are as great a bear as old Brian.”
“To be sure I am,” he returned with a delighted laugh. “I have often
regretted the loss I have been to the diplomatic service! Don’t you
know that manners run in our family?”
“The want of them you mean,” indignantly. “This room is got up in the
very latest fashion.”
“Like its mistress?” with a cool, deliberate stare.
“Yes. _I_ attempt to be civilised!”
“And of course I know that I am miserably behindhand. A poor old
mofussilite! Pray what’s that thing?” pointing to “Mossoo,” who was
coiled up in a chair. “Animal, vegetable or mineral?”
“It’s my dog--a thoroughbred French poodle. I brought him with me.”
“The latest fashion in poodles--I suppose. Eh?” focussing “Mossoo” with
his glass. “I wonder what the dogs out here will take him for! How do
you like India?”
“Extremely--I don’t wish ever to go home; I hope I shall live and die
out here! I love it better and better every day.”
“You have only been out five weeks; wait till you have been out for
five years, and you have heard the brain fever bird, and felt the hot
winds, and seen a few snakes and scorpions! India is not a country; it
is a climate.”
“Thank you! I am not afraid of your horrors; I shall go to the hills,
and I intend to enjoy myself in hills and plains, and to like India
immensely. I suppose _you_ were out here long before the Mutiny?”
“The Mutiny! Good gracious, my dear madam,” exclaimed her visitor
(whose one vulnerable point happened to be his age, and flattered
himself that he did not look a day older than forty). “For what do you
take me? Long before the Mutiny! Why I have only twenty-seven years’
service.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I did not know; but I daresay climate tells on
people--you _look_ old.”
“Thank you,” he responded quickly. “I see that you understand the
art of delicate flattery. Ah!” as a note was handed to her. “You
have already begun to experience the real curse of India--chits, yes,
ma’am--chits are the curse of India, and I will leave you to enjoy your
epistle alone; it is sure to be asking for something; your company at
a dull dinner; the loan of a pattern, or of a saddle; or a bottle of
wine; or a dose of medicine!”
“Not at all,” rejoined Belle, casting her eyes over it. “It is from Mr.
Lovelace, sending snipe, and asking me to play tennis. I am afraid you
take a gloomy view of life, and people in general.”
“I take a gloomy view of _some_ people, I must confess,” and then
he got up rather abruptly and made his adieux, and Belle had a
disagreeable consciousness, that she had failed to make a good
impression. Visions of diamonds, and ponies, faded back into cloudland,
and she laughed aloud, as she pictured herself daring to pat this
gruff outspoken connection on the head, much less to stroke his
severe, sarcastic-looking face! As he whirled away, he remarked to his
hot-tempered pony: “She is like you, Judy, a Tartar, if ever there
was one! She will want a tight curb and a strong hand over her. Poor
Holroyd. Unfortunate devil!”
Belle’s other visitors were more appreciative, and they came, all
the ladies in the Station, in their latest Europe bonnets, and all
the inquisitive young men, in their neatest ties and boots, and they
were charmed with the bride--the latter especially. She had such
splendid eyes, and so much to say for herself, and was so unaffected
and agreeable. Why Mrs. Calvert and Miss Gay had not been _half_
loud enough in her praises! They had not prepared them for such an
acquisition to Mangobad. True, when one or two enthusiastic subalterns
at the Club had been eloquent on the subject of the lady’s charms of
person and manner, in the hearing of the Collector, he had merely
grunted, and shrugged his shoulders, and called for a glass of
“Kummel,” but he was a regular old Diogenes, and no one minded his
opinion, excepting on such matters as horses, whist, and wine.
Belle’s letters home were full of her delightful new life, and her
supreme happiness, and Mrs. Redmond read them to her friends, in a
voice that shook with emotion. Her plans had succeeded far beyond her
most sanguine hopes. In spite of what the Bible said, the wicked
did prosper! After all, she had only done evil that good might come,
and good _had_ come. She did not fail to impart Belle’s effusions to
Betty--who listened with a white but smiling face--to Maria, and to
Miss Dopping; accounts of tiffin parties, dinners, and dances, given
for her as a bride, and what she had worn, and how her dress had
fitted, and who had taken her in, and what people had said; also minute
descriptions of her legion of servants, her house, her piano, her
ponies, and her plate (a splendid and enlarged edition of the above was
soon in circulation in the village), but there was scarcely an allusion
to her lord and master. He was constantly on duty; he seemed to have an
immensity to do; he looked ill, and had quite lost his spirits; he took
no care of himself, and she intended to carry him off to some gay hill
station for a complete change.
“It was not Belle’s custom to talk of anything that was near her
heart,” explained her mother. “She is extremely anxious about him, I
can see, but her feelings are not on the surface.”
“Nor anywhere else,” muttered Miss Dopping; then aloud: “It strikes me
that she seems a good deal _more_ anxious about getting the creases out
of her velvet dress! However, I am glad you are pleased. If she was my
daughter, I’d rather hear less about her clothes and more about her
husband.”
* * * * *
Belle’s triumphs had not been much over-rated. She was quite the
latest novelty, and the acknowledged beauty of the station. Young
men were proud to be her partners in ball-room or tennis court. She
was vivacious, amusing and accomplished; and her pretty dresses and
her pretty speeches disarmed her would-be rivals. She took the place
by storm as on board the _Nankin_, and no entertainment was complete
without Mrs. Holroyd! She acted, she sang at penny readings, she
composed people’s fancy dresses, she played the harmonium in church,
and was secretary to the tennis club. In fact, as old Sally Dopping
would have said, “She had a finger in every pie.” Her restless spirit,
and excitable temperament, supplied her with sufficient energy to
revolve in one untiring whirl from morn till midnight. She was always
_en course_. She drove to the club before breakfast to read the papers
and gossip; early in the afternoon, she went forth again, regardless of
the sun, a syce holding an umbrella over her head, and “Mossoo” sitting
sedately in the cart beside her, to tiffin parties, teas, or tennis;
then there were rehearsals for concerts, theatricals, choir practice,
moonlight picnics and balls. For these latter Belle filled in her
programme (in ink) days previously.
Home was the place where she slept, and breakfasted, and sometimes
dined, but home was not where she “lived” in the true sense of the
word. In it she expected no happiness for herself, and made none for
others. Pleasure was her god, and to this she carried the sacrifice of
her life. With constant gaiety came an incessant hunger, a craving for
more. Not content with Mangobad she sighed for other fields to conquer;
she went to this station, and to that, for the annual “Week,” to
Lucknow for the cup-races, to Allahabad for balls, bearing her husband
in her train. Gay, vivacious, pretty, a born actress, a matchless
dancer, Belle, as she playfully expressed it, “took” extremely well.
George gratified all her whims, patiently hung about ball-room doors
till the early hours of the morning, carried her wraps, cashed her
cheques, went her messages, and gave her freely and liberally of
everything--except his company. For the first time in her existence,
Belle was absolutely contented. This really _was_ life--a life well
worth living, a glorious realisation of all her hopes. But would it
last?
CHAPTER IV.
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.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. REDMOND’S CONFESSION.
“I’ll tell to thee my hopes and fears,
And all my heart to thee confess.”
--MAXWELL.
The flame of Mrs. Redmond’s life flickered along unsteadily from day
to day, and month to month. She was now entirely bed-ridden, and the
strain of constant nursing wore Betty down a good deal. Occasionally
Maria Finny came and spent an hour or two in the sick room--and
subsequently spread alarming reports in the village, where deaths and
births were the only exciting events; a marriage was rare indeed. Once
she even went so far as to assure Mrs. Maccabe, that the dying woman
“could not possibly put over the night,” and to request that a very
superior sirloin (then hanging in the shop) should be immediately set
aside for the funeral breakfast! but when Maria hurried to Noone the
next morning she found the invalid not merely alive, but better--better
and fretful.
“Ah,” she said in answer to Maria’s query, “I was bad enough
yesterday--yes, you thought I was going--I could have died if I
_liked_, long ago, but I am holding on--holding on--at least till the
next mail comes in.”
All she seemed to care for now was the Indian mail, but how many mails
come in and brought her no letters! Belle was enjoying herself without
a thought of her. It was Betty who was her real daughter, the girl whom
she had wronged. Every one else was going from her, and she was going
from every one! The old lady was not in a happy frame of mind, she was
filled with remorse now.
Betty’s determined refusal of Ghosty Moore had opened her eyes, but had
occasioned no surprise to Miss Dopping. That excellent lady had her
own private views, and was truly concerned to see her young friend so
hollow-eyed and pale, so different from what she used to be! But Betty
never uttered a word of complaint, and she struggled along bravely
under the heavy tasks imposed on her; she was a-foot all day--the first
to rise, the last to go to rest, therefore Miss Dopping drove over
one afternoon to have a serious talk with Mrs. Redmond, about getting
a professional nurse to take some of the load off Betty’s shoulders,
but the miserly patient turned a deaf ear to her suggestion. A trained
nurse would require wages, she would certainly eat--possibly she would
drink porter!
“Betty,” she declared, “did very well. Betty liked nursing. Betty could
manage alone.”
And as the wish was father to the thought, Mrs. Redmond believed it,
and relapsed into her normal condition of torpid selfishness.
“I don’t know what I should do without her, or what she will do without
me,” she groaned. “It’s a great trial that she won’t look at Ghosty
Moore. She has refused him twice. I can’t understand her, and the
Moores so fond of her, and such a splendid connection, and for Belle
too. It’s too bad of Betty. Have you any idea of her real reason?”
“I believe I have,” replied Miss Dopping with unexpected promptness.
“I always thought that George Holroyd was in love with Betty, and
that she had a fancy for him.” As she spoke she looked sharply at her
questioner, and Mrs. Redmond’s face betrayed her; she was weak, and had
lost the command of her countenance.
Her eyes fell, her lips twitched nervously, a faint guilty colour stole
into her pallid face.
In a second, the astute old maid had guessed all, and felt disposed to
deal with her companion as Queen Elizabeth did with the Countess of
Nottingham, and shake the dying woman in her bed, and declare that “God
might forgive her, but she never would!”
“Then it _was_ Betty?” leaning forward and speaking in a hoarse whisper.
“It was,” returned the other in a still fainter key. “Now you know my
secret--keep it.”
“No--not from Betty--in all justice to George Holroyd, she shall know
that he is a man of honour and did not break his pledge. Woman! what
possessed you to ruin two lives, and peril your own immortal soul?”
“Belle is happy--I did it for her,” protested the culprit.
“And is every one to be sacrificed to Belle! And _is_ Belle happy?
I know Holroyd is not; other people can write besides his wife. The
Moores’ niece says she would never have known him--he has grown so
silent and careworn, and as to Belle, I need not tell you what her
temper is! Nor that she cannot keep a servant, or a female friend. She
is the scourge and heartscald of the station.”
“He paid her great attention,” faltered Mrs. Redmond. “She fully
expected his offer.”
“Not a bit of it,” returned Miss Dopping scornfully. “She paid _him_
great attention. I only hope she is half as attentive to him still!
Does she know?”
“No one knows but Holroyd and myself.”
“It was a bold game for an ailing old woman! I have no doubt the devil
helped you. How did you do it?”
“I gave Betty’s letter to Belle--I had only to change one word.”
“Well, you must tell Betty at once.”
“Don’t you think she is happier not to know?” faltered the invalid.
“Don’t I think that you are a wicked, treacherous old creature! She has
blamed the wrong person for more than a year. Take your sin on your own
head. If I were the girl, I would never forgive you. You have ruined
her life and his. It would never surprise _me_ if he took to drink, or
if he were to shoot Belle. I believe _I’d_ shoot her, if I was married
to her.”
“What nonsense you talk, old Sally Dopping!” exclaimed the invalid
angrily. “George is a sane, respectable man; he has got a very pretty,
accomplished wife, and as to Betty--she is young----”
“She is, and before she is a week older she shall know that George
Holroyd kept faith with her.”
“I can’t tell her--I won’t tell her,” protested the culprit irritably.
“Very well! it would come better from you than me; you may sweeten your
story--I shall not. I give you three days’ law, three days to make up
your mind--not an hour longer.”
And then Miss Dopping arose, holding herself unusually erect, seized
her umbrella, and marched straight out of the room without another
word--without even the formality of “Good afternoon.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Redmond endured Miss Dopping’s daily “Have you told her?” for
a whole week, before she mustered up her courage and spoke. It was
at night time, when the house was closed and silent. Betty had been
reading the Bible, seated at a small table, with the lamp-light falling
on her face--a face that could not be implacable.
“Betty,” began the invalid suddenly, “I have something important to say
to you. Open my dressing-case--the key is in it, and take a letter out
of the flap.”
Betty rose and did as desired. Mrs. Redmond received the letter with a
shaking hand, saying, as she did so:
“Sit down and tell me something, Betty. Did it ever occur to you, that
George Holroyd liked you?”
Betty, who had been standing hitherto, sat down, and faced her
questioner with silent lips and piteous eyes.
“How could he?” she said at last in a very low voice. “He married
Belle.”
“Yes, Betty, he did, and I must ease my mind and confess a great wrong
to you before I die. He married Belle because I made him marry her.”
“You!--I don’t understand.”
“You know that Belle was my idol ever since she was born. I would
have died for her. I was prepared to make any sacrifice for her. I--I
sacrificed _you_!”
Betty leant her arms on the table, and gazed at her aunt with a
colourless face.
“The letter I gave to Belle was yours, addressed under cover to me,
to Miss Elizabeth Redmond; he only mentioned your name once. I was
sorely tempted; the letter would apply equally well to Belle. I blotted
out that word. I gave it to her, and now she is away at the other end
of the world, dancing and singing and amusing herself, whilst you are
the only comfort of the wicked woman who spoiled your life. But Belle
fretted so dreadfully, her heart was set on change. She never dreamt
that he cared for _you_. His proposal to you would have been an awful
blow. I dared not tell her; you remember her attacks--her violent
nervous attacks? A doctor once told me that her frenzies bordered on
insanity, and that any sudden nervous shock might--might--Betty dear,”
lowering her voice, “you and I alone know--though we have never, never
spoken of it--that sometimes she was a little strange--not quite
herself.”
Betty recalled, with a shiver, one dark winter’s night, when, after a
day of terrible depression, Belle had appeared suddenly in the study,
her hair wet, a table knife gleaming in her hand, and an odd wild
look in her eyes. “Do you know what I have been doing?” she asked
triumphantly.
“I felt that I must do something or go mad. I saw Maggie going out to
the poultry yard with a knife and a candle. I went with her. I killed a
fowl. I cut its throat. I _liked_ doing it! Yes, I did.”
“Betty--Betty do not cover your face,” pleaded Mrs. Redmond. “Are you
very, very angry?”
“Oh, what is the good of being angry?” moaned the girl, with a long
shuddering sigh, and the old lady noticed that tears were trickling
through her fingers. Tears not wholly of grief. It was balm to her
wounded heart to know that, though lost to her for ever, George had
not been false, nor she willingly forsaken. He had been faithful. Poor
George!
“Of course I know you will never forgive me,” whimpered Mrs. Redmond.
“You will go away, and leave me, and I shall die with no one near me
but a strange hospital nurse, who will rob me out of the face. Oh! I am
sorry I ever told you. It was all old Sally’s doing. She _made_ me.”
“No--no--aunt, do not be afraid that I shall desert you; but oh! what
must he think of me?”
“He knows all. I wrote very plainly, and here is his letter to
me--keep it. It was a bold venture sending out Belle. I wonder I had
the strength and nerve to go through that awful time. Supposing he
had refused to marry her, and she had been cast adrift helpless and
penniless! I declare I never had a real night’s rest until I got the
telegram to say that the wedding was over.”
“You might have trusted him!”
“Yes, especially when I told him that you were soon to be married to
Ghosty Moore, and had never given him a thought.”
“Oh, Aunt Emma!”
The girl’s voice was sharp with pain, and she trembled from head to
foot.
“Yes, indeed, I stuck at nothing; but then I must say, that I had no
suspicion that you liked George Holroyd, and I was confident that
you would accept Augustus Moore. I wrote everything quite frankly to
Holroyd--and he married Belle.”
“Does she know?” enquired Betty faintly.
“Know? Oh, no! and never will; but after all I am afraid they are not
very happy. He is sure not to understand her temper--it’s all over so
soon too, and, poor girl, she is always sorry. Betty, you must promise
me solemnly that he shall never know that _you_ know.”
“What does it matter?” she returned. “We shall never meet again, but
whether or no, I can make no promise.”
“I--I suppose you would not go out to Belle?”
“_Aunt Emma!_”
“You know she is always wishing for you; she is a jealous girl, and of
course if she knew, she would as soon have the plague in the house!
Well, I must say, Betty, you have taken it beautifully; you are a dear
good child; come and kiss me. I shall sleep all the better for having
a load off my mind, and when you have settled the fire, and fixed the
night-light, and given me my draught, you can go.”
Mrs. Redmond slept peacefully that night, with heavy long-drawn snores,
but Betty sat hour after hour in her window, with dry, tearless
eyes, looking out upon the stars that seemed to return her gaze with
sympathy, and shone with a frosty brightness. She was still sitting
there when they began to pale. The next time Miss Dopping came to Noone
she found Maria closeted with Betty, whilst the invalid was asleep.
“No letter from Belle this morning, I suppose?” enquired the old lady.
“No, but I heard of her,” returned Maria with eager volubility. “I
was at the Moores’ yesterday and met their niece, who is just home
from India. She saw Belle lately; she has lost every scrap of her
looks, and is as yellow as a kite’s claw; her temper has worn her to
fiddle-strings, and they are as much afraid of her out there as if she
were a mad dog! As to Holroyd, you would never know him; he is as grave
and as silent as if he were at a priest’s funeral. I always knew it
would be a miserable match.”
“Oh, _you_ say that of every match, Maria,” rejoined Miss Dopping. “I
don’t believe half I hear. What about this new tea of Casey’s? Have you
tried it?”
“No,” snapped Maria, who saw that the topic was disagreeable, and
naturally pursued it. “I can’t tell you anything about the tea, but I
would be thankful if you would tell me, _what_ possessed young Holroyd
to marry Isabella?”
Miss Sally’s glance met Betty’s.
Betty blushed, and she read in the girl’s eyes that the tale had been
told.
“He was no more in love with her than he was with _me_,” continued Miss
Finny emphatically. “Do you think she had any hold over him, or knew
some secret in his past about money, or----?”
“Murder! say it out boldly. Secret in his past indeed,” repeated Miss
Dopping. “Tut, tut, Maria! I could not have believed that a woman of
your age could be such a fool, but of course there’s no fool like an
old one.” Nevertheless Miss Dopping glanced somewhat nervously out of
the corner of her eye at Betty. But Betty was staring into the fire.
A few days later Mrs. Redmond had passed away tranquilly in her sleep,
with all Belle’s letters--no great quantity--under her pillow, and
Belle’s most flattering photograph grasped in her rigid hand.
* * * * *
Mrs. Holroyd received the news of her mother’s death in her usual
extravagant fashion. She wept, and raved, and screamed, and roamed
about the house in her dressing-gown, with her hair loose, subsisted
on sal-volatile and champagne, and angrily refused all comfort. She
ordered the deepest mourning, and tied a wide black ribbon round
“Mossoo’s” neck.
At the end of three days, she went out driving for the sake of her
health, and despatched a very business-like letter to Betty, respecting
her darling mother’s rings, and plate, and household effects. At the
end of the week, she was playing tennis with her usual vigour and
agility, and at the end of a month, even to her husband’s surprise,
she was talking of leaving off her crape, and regretting that she could
not take part in some theatricals, and society (not easily scandalised)
was shocked to see Belle subsequently give way to precisely the same
violent outbreak of grief over a dead monkey as she had recently
displayed at the death of her mother! And in future, society tapped its
forehead and looked significant when it spoke of Mrs. Holroyd.
One afternoon, not long after her double bereavement, Belle was amazed
and flattered to hear that the Collector Sahib was at the door, and to
receive Mr. Redmond’s card. He had come solely to talk to her about
his niece Betty, he informed her with his usual bluntness. “Where is
she now?” he enquired, as he carefully selected a seat. “Tell me all
you know about her.” Now that Mrs. Redmond was dead, he was resolved
to assert his claim as her nearest of kin, and to import her to India
as his companion, housekeeper, and adopted daughter--for, in spite of
the tempting snares that were spread for him, he had no inclination to
marry again.
“She is at Ballingoole with Miss Dopping. I wanted to have had her out,
but George is so queer, he says married people are best alone.”
“Some are,” assented Mr. Redmond, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
“And although she is not very pretty, not the least like _me_, she
would be quite a beauty among the hideous girls that are here. I’d have
seen that she made a good match, and not married a wretched subaltern
like George, but a Bengal Civilian like yourself. Don’t say that _I_
never pay you a compliment!”
“Thank you,” he replied, in his driest manner. “Tell me one thing, Mrs.
Holroyd, does she resemble you in any way?”
“No,” rejoined Belle with a triumphant laugh, “you would never dream
that we were related. We are as opposite as the poles, and the same
people never like us! I mean people that like Betty, hate me, and _vice
versâ_. She is tall, and has grey eyes and rides splendidly, and is
quite a cook. _You_ would appreciate that! She has wonderful spirits,
and the nerves of a man, but she is not really pretty, or taking;
she is not sympathetic with men; in fact, poor mother--she was so
partial--always said she was a capital foil for _me_.”
“I can easily believe it,” he rejoined with an irony that was
completely lost on his fair listener. “And what about her temper?”
“No one has ever seen her angry in her life--really angry, you know--of
course she is cross now and then; she has that serene disposition that,
mother said, always went with an insipid character.”
“Your description enchants me! I delight in insipid people,” exclaimed
Mr. Redmond, rubbing his chin quite fiercely. “Ha, hum! a good cook,
a good rider, plain, insipid, and serene. I shall write by the mail
to-morrow--I am her nearest of kin--and ask her to come out and live
with me.”
“Oh, you dear, darling, delightful old man!” cried Belle, springing
from her seat. “Oh, you angel, I declare I should like to kiss you, I
really should.”
“I beg, madam, that you will do nothing of the sort,” backing away
as he spoke. “And let me ask one thing. For goodness’ sake don’t go
gabbling my plans all over the station. I hate to have my private
affairs discussed by a pack of women, and besides, she may not come.
She may prefer Ballingoole and Miss Dopping.”
“Miss Dopping will _send_ her out--she thinks Betty is lost in
Ballingoole. She often said so. She is sure to come! And to what a
delightful home. Carriages, horses, and everything. I suppose you will
give her the blue room? Can I help you to get it ready? Do tell me, can
I do anything for you?”
“Yes, keep my news to yourself, that is all you can do. You may tell
your husband, of course.”
“Oh, I shall not mention it to a soul, you may rely on that; it shall
be a dead secret between you and me. It will be capital fun. I shall
keep it as a grand surprise for George.”
CHAPTER VI.
A GRAND SURPRISE FOR GEORGE.
“There is no armour against fate.”
--SHIRLEY.
“Behind no prison gate, she said,
Which slurs the sunshine half a mile,
Live captives so uncomforted
As souls behind a smile.”
--THE MASK.--MRS. BROWNING.
A few people in the station knew that the Collector was expecting a
niece, but the news never reached George’s ears. He did not frequent
the ladies’ room at the Club, nor other likely sources of general
or particular information. Belle hugged her secret in silence, as
far as he was concerned, and implored Captain La Touche (who had his
suspicions about this other Miss Redmond, and was prepared to stand
by for some frightful domestic explosion) not to breathe a word on the
subject. It was to be a grand surprise for George.
Mr. Redmond himself escorted Betty from Bombay, and the morning after
their arrival Belle hurried over at an early hour, to greet her cousin,
whom she nearly smothered with her caresses. She looked critically
at Betty, as they sat over “chota hazree” in the pretty fern-lined
verandah, and she told herself that her cousin was much changed. She
was more composed, more self-reliant, and--was it possible?--dignified.
She carried herself with quite an air of distinction, and was
remarkably well dressed. Belle would certainly think twice before
patronising, bullying, or storming at _this_ Betty. And how Belle’s
tongue ran on. She scarcely gave her companion time to answer a
question; volubly setting forth her delight at her arrival, the
condition of her own health, the state of her wardrobe, asking in one
breath what sort of a passage she had had, inquiring for the Finnys and
Moores, and how hats were worn; giving hasty and not always pleasing
sketches of the other ladies in the station, and winding up with an
imperious command to come over and see her bungalow, “only next door,
only in the next compound.”
Betty assented, saying with a laugh, as Belle took her arm, “I don’t
even know what a compound is; it might be a lake or a parish.”
Mrs. Holroyd had done up her house in honour of her cousin’s arrival;
re-arranged the draperies, replaced the palms and re-adjusted the
furniture, and proudly convoyed her from room to room.
“You will find George a good deal changed, very gloomy and silent,”
she remarked, as she displayed his dressing-room, with its rows of
boots and saddlery. “My dear, you never know a man’s _real_ character
till you marry him. In old days he used to be rather jolly, now----”
and she turned up her eyes, and threw up her hands dramatically, “he
is like the chief mourner at a funeral. By the way, Betty, why did you
not marry Ghosty Moore? You were mad to refuse him! I warn you that you
won’t do _half_ as well out here.”
“But I don’t want to do half as well,” returned Betty gaily.
“You don’t mean to say, that you are going to be an old maid?”
“Why not? I am convinced that I should be a delightful one.”
“Rubbish! I know the style. Godmother to every one’s horrid baby;
sick nurse to all the wheezy old women; _confidante_ in love affairs;
peace-maker, and general consoler in times of domestic affliction. Ugh!
sooner than play such a rôle I’d die.”
“No, no, Belle, you have a kind heart, you would play your part more
creditably than you pretend.”
“Look here, Betty,” she exclaimed, inconsequently, “has he said a word
about the diamonds? I suppose not yet--unless he mentioned them in the
train. I mean your uncle, of course, and of course they will be yours.
What a dry old creature he is. Quite gritty. Has he taken to you, dear?”
Betty blushed, and before she had time to answer, Belle added:
“He told me not to chatter about you; and only fancy, George does not
know that you are expected, much less that you have _arrived_.”
“What!” exclaimed Betty, her blush deepening to scarlet. “Oh, Belle,
you are not in earnest!”
“To be sure I am in earnest. I kept it as a surprise for him,” and as
the sound of clattering hoofs was heard rapidly approaching--“Here he
is.”
She and her visitor were already in the hall, as George cantered under
the porch, and she ran to the door, screaming out, “George, guess who
is here. Guess, guess!”
He, supposing it to be Captain La Touche, or some other brother
officer, stood for a moment giving orders to his syce, and then turned
to ascend the steps.
But who was this to whom Belle was clinging? His heart seemed to
contract; his head felt dizzy--as he recognised _Betty_. Betty,
grown to womanhood, and prettier than ever. In one lightning flash he
contrasted the pair before him. The little dark, sallow woman, with the
shining teeth and tropical eyes, who was the wife whom fate had sent
him, and the pale, slight, graceful girl, who was his first love, his
heart’s desire, the wife that he had lost!
George, as he gazed, became as white as death; he slowly raised his
chin-strap, and removed his helmet, and ascended the steps with much
clattering of sword and spurs. He could not speak, were it to save
his life. The situation was too strong for him. He ventured to look
at this rather stately maiden, expecting to see certain disdain, and
possibly hatred in her eyes, but no, she met his gaze with a glance of
unaffected friendship, and actually offered him her hand.
“George,” cried Belle excitedly. “How funny you are! _Don’t_ you
remember Betty? This has been my secret, and you don’t know what it has
cost me to keep it, but I thought that it would burst on you as such a
delightful surprise.”
George found his tongue at last, as he said in a level, expressionless
voice: “This is indeed a most unexpected pleasure! When did you arrive?”
“Last evening by the mail,” rejoined Betty with desperate cheerfulness.
“I little guessed when I heard yesterday that Mr. Redmond had gone
to Bombay to meet a lady who that lady was. Belle,” turning to his
garrulous wife, “I see that you _can_ keep your own counsel.”
“Can I not? Betty, you may trust me with all your love affairs. I am
sure you have had at least _one_, and you will find me a most discreet
_confidante_.”
“How did you leave them all at Ballingoole?” enquired her husband
precipitately.
“Very well, just as usual.”
“And did you see my mother lately?”
“Yes, just before I started. I have brought you a small parcel from her
and Cuckoo.”
“I suppose Cuckoo is growing up.”
“She _is_ grown up, in her own estimation; she wears long dresses and
has abolished her pigtail, and is really quite a nice-looking girl.”
At this statement, Belle broke into a peal of derisive laughter, and
said, “And pray what has become of Brown, Jones and Robinson?”
“Poor Brown is dead; he died of apoplexy, just like any rich old
gentleman. Mrs. Finny has taken Robinson, and Miss Dopping, Jones. I
was thinking of bringing him out, but I did not know whether Uncle
Bernard liked dogs.”
“And now you know that he is a dog-ridden man--dogs clamouring at his
table, dogs at his heels, dogs everywhere.”
“Yes, and all fox terriers, but none to compare with Jones. Uncle
Bernard has told me to write for him, and as he is a dog of independent
means he can pay his own passage. By the way, as I don’t see him, I
suppose ‘Mossoo’ is dead.”
“_Dead_,” echoed Belle in her shrillest key. “How dreadfully unfeeling
you are, Betty! Do you suppose for one moment that you would see me
laughing and talking if I had lost him? No, thank goodness! ‘Mossoo’
is in splendid health; this is his morning for the barber. If anything
were to happen to ‘Mossoo’ it would break my heart. I always hope that
I may die before him.”
“Oh, Belle!” exclaimed her kinswoman in a shocked voice. “I see you are
just as bad as ever, and now,” opening her white umbrella, “I really
must be going. Uncle Bernard will think that I am lost. Good-bye,
Belle. Good-bye, Mr. Holroyd,” and she went down the steps and walked
quickly away, with Belle’s last sentence ringing in her ears:
“Not Mr. Holroyd, Betty; you must call him _George_.”
* * * * *
George had stood listening to his wife and her cousin like a man in a
dream. Was it real--was this girl Betty?
How bright and merry she was, how her eyes sparkled and smiled--was she
a marvellous actress, a woman with matchless self-control; or else had
she never cared? Most likely she had never cared.
She was young, and happy, and free, whilst he was bound, and fettered,
and wretched.
“Well, George,” said Belle angrily, “I really think you might have
offered to walk back with her, I do indeed. It’s rather hard on me that
my husband can’t be civil to the only friend I have in the world. Do
you dislike her?”
“No, why should you suppose so?”
“Then why did you not _talk_? Why were you so stiff and ceremonious--so
different from what you used to be at Noone? You hardly spoke to her,
and she is like my own sister; you might have kissed her. I am sure she
expected it.”
“And I am sure she did nothing of the kind,” he returned sharply, and
then he went into his writing room, closed the door and took off his
mask.
This was the refinement of torture, the devil himself had arranged this
meeting!
Surely his lot was bad enough as it was--a squalid home, a scolding
wife, a broken career. For staff appointments were inaccessible, he
would not dream of applying for one. People would as soon have the
cholera in the station, as the notorious Mrs. Holroyd--and now, as the
crown and flower of all his sorrows, here was Betty, come to witness
the misery, the horror, the daily heart-sickening humiliation of his
married life, and would naturally say to herself:
“It was for _this_ he forsook and forgot me.”
And she would never know. He must be for ever silent. In his mind’s eye
he saw Belle, with her irrepressible tongue, throwing a lurid light on
their domestic life, on their quarrels, on their social misfortunes,
and on all his shortcomings. At the very thought he clenched his hands
fiercely and great beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. He
saw his future, the future he had chosen, stretching out before him--an
awful, barren waste. He saw that he had made a hideous mistake, and the
iron of a great despair entered into his soul.
* * * * *
“So you have been over the way _already_?” exclaimed Mr. Redmond as his
niece joined him. “Why, you look quite pale, the journey has knocked
you up, what possessed you to go out?”
“Oh, I am not the least tired; it is no distance; and you know we are
very old friends. Belle came to fetch me.”
“As long as she does not come and fetch _me_, I don’t care. Yes, my
dear, I don’t like your cousin; thank goodness, your very distant
cousin. She is the only drawback to Mangobad.”
“Oh, Uncle Bernard, I am so sorry to hear you say so.”
“Do you like her?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, of course I do,” returned Betty, and she believed that she was
speaking the truth.
“Well, my dear, you are the mistress of this house, and I wish to see
you make yourself at home and happy. Have her here as much as ever you
like when I am away, but I entreat and implore of you to keep us apart,
I am afraid of my life of her. I am not joking--I am paralysed by the
mere terror of her presence, I give you my honour--I am indeed.”
In one respect George’s prognostications were correct. Belle made Betty
her _confidante_. She went over to see her daily, to “chota hazree” or
tiffin or tea--always at hours when the master of the house was at
Cutcherry. She liked to turn over Betty’s dresses, to unburthen her
mind, and to drive out in the Collector’s easy landau, and under the
wing of the Collector’s pretty niece worm her way back into social
importance. (No one recognised an effort on Betty’s part, and she
only knew it herself, when she realised what a relief it was to be
alone with her uncle.) This was the bright side of the shield; it had
its reverse. It was hard to see a girl, who had always been in the
background, placed above her, living in a luxurious home, driving in
London-built carriages, presiding at splendid dinners, and attended by
obsequious and numerous chaprassies. Luckily for her own peace, the
new queen gave herself no airs; she was as kind, as generous, and as
sympathetic as ever, but on one subject she refused, fiercely refused,
to sympathise--_George_. She would never listen to a word against him.
Once she turned a white resolute face on Belle, and said very sternly:
“You say that he is an excellent husband, nurses you when you are ill,
gives you everything you ask for, presses you to buy new dresses, and
to go to the hills, has never begun a quarrel, never gambles, drinks,
or flirts; what do you want?”
“He is all you say, but he is odd. He--only to _you_ would I tell this,
Bet--”
“Don’t, don’t, I won’t hear it!” cried her companion passionately, and
putting her fingers up to her ears.
“It’s nothing bad,” screamed Belle, pulling away one of her cousin’s
hands. “It is only this. George, I daresay, likes me as well as most
men like their wives, and he is far more polite and considerate than
one out of fifty, but I am sure he has never been in love with me.
There is no harm in telling you what is true. I cannot grumble, for
I have never been in love with him; we are not really sympathetic.
He is scrupulously polite, and attentive and kind, but he hates
‘Mossoo.’ I have heard him _swear_ at him, and he is so reserved and
undemonstrative. There is a veil across his heart that I have never
been able to tear aside. He as good as told me once, that he _had_
liked some one--and once means always with him, he is so pig-headed!
Oh, if I only knew who she had been, or who she _is_,” and her eyes
blazed dangerously, “how I could hate her. I suppose, Betty, you have
no idea? You know the Malones so intimately. Did they ever drop a
hint?”
“Never,” she responded in a low, quiet voice.
“Oh, well then I can’t make it out! I should have thought you might
have known--you were such friends with that odious little tell-tale
Cuckoo--and that if anyone could have told me, it would have been
_you_.”
CHAPTER VII.
A STORY IN HER EYES.
“Her eye in silence hath a speech,
Which eye best understands.”
--MORLEY.
Betty was considered quite an acquisition in the station (though, after
its recent experience, the station was somewhat inclined to be coy in
its reception of fascinating strangers). True, she neither sang nor
acted, but she was pretty, young, and bright, played the hostess with
surprising success, and rode well forward with the Bobbery Pack on her
uncle’s well-known racing pony, “Leading Article.”
She received friendly advice about her health, and her ayah, and the
necessary precautions to preserve her clothes, and her complexion, in
the spirit in which it was meant, and was as popular as her cousin was
the reverse.
Strange to say--or perhaps it was not very strange--she rarely saw
George Holroyd save in the distance at polo or gymkhanas. In three
months’ time they had not exchanged three sentences. He was as distant,
and as formal, as if they had never met before, and she was secretly
hurt to notice that he avoided her purposely. But he could not avoid
her on that miserable occasion, when she came to a dinner, given in her
honour, at his own house.
The guests were twelve in number, and included, besides the Redmonds,
Captain La Touche, the Calverts, and Miss Gay, also the Judge and Mrs.
Pope--the latter, an elderly lady, with a generous face and fine head,
a woman good to know and look at, a woman to be relied on, and whose
heart was so large that she could even spare a morsel for “poor queer
Mrs. Holroyd.” The table was prettily decorated (by Betty), and there
was no unfortunate mistake about the Chartreuse _this_ time, but it
was not a pleasant entertainment; the hostess was in a bad temper,
the “plats” were abominable. Mr. Redmond was unusually “gritty”; to
be frank, the Collector liked his dinner, he had had a long day at
Cutcherry, and he was hungry, but this was dog’s food--“rateeb.”
Belle, with a touch of rouge on her cheeks and a feverish sparkle in
her eyes, talked and laughed incessantly, with an occasional fierce
aside to the servants, and a deadly thrust at her husband. She had
strung up her nerves with a strong dose of sal-volatile, and her
sallies spared no one.
Poor George! Was he happy with the wrong woman at the head of the
table, and the right woman on his left hand?
“George,” screamed the former, “just look at that wretch, he is handing
round port instead of claret. He has given Miss Gay port and soda
water, but _you_ don’t mind what they do, nor help me one bit; as long
as you can smoke and shoot, _you_ are satisfied!”
During this agreeable speech everyone commenced to talk with feverish
animation, so as to drown Mrs. Holroyd’s shrill voice. When the port
was carefully and properly handed round, she began again:
“Betty,” she exclaimed, “don’t you think George has become very quiet?
I notice that you and he have hardly opened your lips; is he not
silent to what he used to be?”
“Perhaps, like the parrot, he _thinks_ the more,” growled Mr. Redmond,
figuratively drawing his sword.
“Perhaps so, and like the parrot I shall have to give him a red chili
to make him talk,” rejoined Belle smartly.
“He could not be in better hands,” retorted the Collector, “no one so
capable as Mrs. Holroyd, of giving him something _hot_.”
Belle affected not to hear this pleasantry, and, turning to Captain La
Touche, said abruptly:
“What is that French riddle you have just given Miss Gay?”
“Oh, a mere bagatelle. I will give you one for yourself if you care to
guess it.”
“I delight in French riddles, you know I am half French!”
“Then listen to this,” counting on his plump white fingers.
“Mon premier c’est un Monstre,
Mon second c’est, un Tyran,
Mon tout c’est le diable lui Même.
Mais si vous aimez mon premier,
Vous ne craindrez pas mon second,
Et mon tout c’est le bonheur suprême.”
“I give it up,” said Belle, after several ineffectual guesses,
“although I am generally very good at them, and at all conundrums. It
sounds rather odd. Is it quite _proper_?”
“Proper! My dear madam, the answer speaks for itself; the word is
_Mariage_.”
“Mon premier c’est un Monstre--Mari,
Mon second c’est un Tyran--age,
Mon tout c’est le diable lui Même.”
“Yes, yes, I see, not at all bad,” she exclaimed condescendingly, but
she did not demand another French riddle; there had been a disagreeable
significance in Mr. Redmond’s expression, as he repeated “Mon tout
c’est le diable lui-même.” “Talking of marriages,” she said, “I hear
there is an end of Miss Lightwood’s engagement to Captain Holster of
the Pink Inexpressibles. Mr. Proudfoot told me, you know the horrible
way he talks. He said that the regiment had headed him off, and that
she was not ‘classy’ enough, or up to the form of the corps.”
“Indeed, it is the first I have heard of it,” returned Captain La
Touche with some animation.
“Yes, I see you are delighted! Your eyes twinkle at the news, you
horrid selfish bachelor; if you had your way, no officer would marry.”
“Oh, come now, Mrs. Holroyd, you must not give me such a character.”
“But I must! I believe you think there ought to be a sort of committee
on every girl before a comrade is allowed to propose to her. I wonder
if you would have passed _me_? You don’t answer; then I shall take
silence for consent?”
“Such a novel suggestion took my breath away, and deprived me for the
moment of the power of speech. I am dumb, simply because the question
is so utterly superfluous.”
Belle smiled and tittered, accepting this double-edged compliment
entirely from Lord Chesterfield’s point of view, and then addressed
herself to her other neighbour. She had already heard him, at an early
period in the feast, saying to his servant, as he gave his plate an
impatient push:
“Here! take this away; get me some dry toast,” and now he was turning
and re-turning his pudding with a palpably scornful spoon! As she
watched him she felt her heart grow hot within her.
“I am afraid you have no appetite,” she observed in her sharpest key.
“I _thought_ you were looking rather yellow and out of sorts.”
“Never felt better in my life, hungry as a hunter; but, my dear madam,
_what_ is this new dish? Did you make it yourself?”
“A _vol au vent_ of plantains, you dreadful _bon vivant_. Is it true
that your first question every morning is, to ask how the wind is, to
see if your club mutton may hang a day longer?”
“A base libel, an invention of the enemy,” he returned emphatically;
and, so saying, he seized his glass, dashed a quantity of sherry into
his plate, and hastily gulped down its contents. Then, as he caught the
fiery eye of his hostess, he saw that she was working herself into a
frame of mind that might be troublesome, and said with his blandest
air:
“I notice that you have a pair of fine new pictures,” screwing his
glass into his eye. “I have not seen them before.”
“Yes--I picked them up at an auction, and I am rather proud of my
purchase, though George there,” with a withering glance at her husband,
“says that the Alps by moonlight might be taken for some haystacks
round a puddle, and that lovely sunset at sea, for a dish of eggs and
bacon. Now tell me your opinion of them frankly; for I believe you _do_
know something about art!”
“As well as I can judge from this distance, and, in fact, not being
much of a judge at any distance, I should say that these pictures
are oil paintings of some notoriety. And in fact, rather remarkable
productions. I give you my word of honour I have not seen anything
_like_ them for a long time; you have secured something quite out of
the common----”
“Ah, really,” looking steadfastly into his grave, impassive face.
“Well then, since I have had your opinion, I shall promote them to the
drawing-room in future. I shall promote _myself_ there now.”
And presently she and her lady guests arose and departed. When the
gentlemen rejoined the rest of the company, there was the usual
after-dinner music. Belle opened the concert with a sparkling little
ballad, and Betty played one of Scharwenker’s wild, weird Polish
dances, that seemed to set every one thinking of their past. Miss
Gay sang by special request “Forever and Forever.” As her rich and
sympathetic voice rang through the room, with its too appropriate
words, Betty bent her face over a book of photographs, and never once
raised it. Her head ached, she was nervous and constrained, and despite
her subsequent efforts to be gay and conversational, more than one
remarked “that pretty Miss Redmond seemed pale and out of spirits.”
She was most thankful when Mrs. Pope rose, and gave the signal for her
own release. She had been figuratively on the rack all that miserable
evening. The exposé of George’s wretched home wrung her very heart.
If Belle had made him happy, if there had been no shame for her in
her thoughts, no pity for him, it would have been different, oh! so
very different. She would not--she was sure--have felt this dreadful
tightness in her throat, and this insane impulse to burst out crying.
The worn-looking, grave young man who escorted her down the hall, but
did not offer to put on her cloak, could he be the same George Holroyd
that used to take her and Cuckoo out schooling through the fields
behind Bridgetstown, and make the keen wintry air ring with his cheery
laugh?
“Well, George! How do you think it went off?” enquired Belle, when the
last guest had taken a peg, a cheroot, and his departure, and she threw
herself yawning into a chair.
George stood with his hands in his pockets, and looked intently at his
boots, and made no reply.
“I think every one enjoyed themselves: it was quite a success. How do
you think Betty was looking?”
“Oh, as usual,” without raising his eyes.
“Of course you don’t admire her, I know; she was pale to-night, but
maybe that was her dress; pink does not suit Betty. Mrs. Pope has
taken such a fancy to her.”
“Has she?”
“She is nearly as enthusiastic as Sally Dopping; she thinks Betty is so
pretty, and interesting-looking! And what _do_ you think the funny old
woman says? She declares that Betty has a story in her eyes.”
“A what? A sty in her eye?”
“A _story_ in her eyes! Isn’t it a preposterous idea? I asked her what
she meant, and she nodded and smiled in that exaggerated way of hers
and said: ‘I am sure I am right, ask her to _tell_ it to you, my dear!’
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, that _she_ had a story in her
mouth, for you know as well as I do, that Betty never cared for anyone
in her life in that way; a story in her eyes indeed!”
As Mr. Redmond and his niece walked home, with a lantern carried before
them as a precaution against snakes, he said: “Thank goodness that’s
over and we need not go again. Betty, is there any cold meat in the
house?”
“Yes, cold corned beef, a nice hump.”
“Good! What a dinner! What courage Holroyd had to marry that woman; he
ought to be decorated with a V. C. What a temper she has.”
“Yes, it’s rather hot certainly.”
“Hot is no name for it. Holroyd acts as a sort of fire-engine between
her and the station. Poor chap! I often see his eyes fixed on her at
dinners with a sort of desperate apprehension as to what she will say
_next_! I wonder what possessed Holroyd to marry her. Do you know?”
No answer.
“She is not young, she has no money, her looks are going. She can talk,
I grant you! It is a pity that such power of utterance is not united to
more intelligence; in many ways she is an absolute fool.”
“Oh, no, Uncle Bernard, indeed she is not,” protested his companion.
“She may not be what you would call intellectual, but she is very
bright, she has plenty of sense.”
“If she has sense then heaven help those who have none. Well--well--she
always rubs _me_ up the wrong way. I don’t believe she has an ounce of
brains, but you think differently, and we won’t fall out. We will never
fall out, you and I, Bet! You are an amiable girl, and make allowances
for everyone, and can be happy and at ease even with that woman in the
next compound.”
But what, oh most learned yet ignorant Collector! what about the _man_
in the next compound?
CHAPTER VIII.
MR. REDMOND’S AMBASSADOR.
“Words that weep, and tears that speak.”
--COWLEY.
George Holroyd avoided the ladies’ room in the Club, the groups of
ladies under the trees outside; he did not play tennis, and, owing to
his wife’s mourning, he was not on duty at dances; therefore he and
Betty rarely met, unless they came across one another out hunting.
On these matchless Indian mornings and evenings, when they drew the
brakes and nullahs, and found; when there was a sound of horn and a
rush and clatter of hoofs among the long grass and cane stubble, away
over the plains, scattering dust and sand on the bye-roads, away,
away after the wiry little grey fox with his black-tipped brush, and
the fleeting, irregular pack of all sorts and conditions of dogs,
Polygars, Rampore hounds, pariahs and fox terriers. Through the fields,
scattering the cattle, through the woods, startling the fruit watchers,
through shallow rivers, rousing the submerged water buffaloes. How good
it is to be young, with every pulse throbbing, every nerve straining,
away to where a little cloud of dust and a momentary scuffle, betoken a
kill in the open.
Tippoo and Sultan, the long-legged Polygars, have overtaken and slain
the fox. Poor Mr. Fox! You will never see your little family again,
will never again bring them home a tender guinea fowl, or a fat pea
chick; they will sit at the sunny side of the bamboo clump and watch
for your return in vain. Your thick, black-tipped brush hangs at Miss
Redmond’s saddle-bow, as she turns homewards, leading the van, charging
through melon-fields, scouring over tracts of sands, jumping nullahs,
fording rivers. But Mr. Holroyd, who was well to the front during the
run, now reins in his hot-tempered Australian and lags conspicuously in
the rear--Why? Only he and Betty knew the reason.
About six weeks before Christmas Mr. Redmond went out into camp for
what is called the “cold weather tour.” It is a Collector’s duty to
visit his tahsils or out-stations, and examine the general condition of
his district, receive petitions and inspect tracts affected by flood or
famine; it is thus that he sees the result of his previous six months’
government. Mr. Redmond departed from Mangobad, with the usual pomp
and imposing train of camels, tents, horses and elephants, and Betty
accompanied him. It was all new to her--a delightful novel life, and
a blessed relief from the painful strain of her daily existence in
cantonments, where the vicinity of George, and the perpetual presence
of Belle was--only to her inmost thoughts did she whisper it--becoming
insupportable. She enjoyed the change and complete freedom; the glories
of a tropical dawn; the early marches through strange surroundings; the
halts in the mango topes; the keen exhilarating air, and at night the
great wood fires. She was left a good deal to herself, and this she
enjoyed also, whilst her uncle conferred with his sleek serishtadars,
received thousands of petitions, and dallies! strings of evil-smelling
yellow marigolds, and sweet pink roses, and many visits from native
gentlemen, on elephants or in palanquins. During these solitary
hours, she read, or worked, or wandered about the adjacent jungle, in
company with her own thoughts. Truly nature is a great physician of
souls! The peace of the place descended into her heart, and soothed
and hushed its repinings, as she drank in the exquisite atmosphere,
the living silence of the jungle, broken only by the sound of her own
footsteps, as she strolled beneath the Kuchnar, and sweet-smelling
cork trees--treading tenderly on their fallen, withering flowers. She
determined to be brave, to shut her eyes to the past, to make the best
of the present, and of the new life that lay before her. She was only
twenty, and she would not permit one misfortune to shadow all her days.
She was resolved to make a second start, but she did not want a second
lover. No! Although she assured herself emphatically that she had now
no other feeling for George than sisterly affection, and intense pity,
she meant to figuratively lock up her heart and throw away the key.
She would not, and could not, bestow it on Mr. Hammond, Mr. Redmond’s
friend--clever, agreeable, and popular as he was. No, nor on Captain La
Touche, nor yet on Mr. Proudfoot. She would be her uncle’s life-long
companion, she would bury the past, she would bear with Belle, and
would think more of others and less of herself, and her own troubles.
These, and many other good resolutions, came flocking round her as
she strolled about the camp by day, or sat outside the tents--whilst
Mr. Redmond dozed in his chair--staring into the big red fire in the
still, cool night--a stillness only broken by the baying of pariah
dogs in distant villages, the howl of the hungry, melancholy jackal,
the shouts of the watchers in the fields scaring wild beasts from the
crops of sugar-cane, bajra and jowar. But life was not always quiet and
solitary. When the camp happened to be within a reasonable distance,
many well-known faces from Mangobad surrounded the great, blazing logs,
and many familiar voices broke the usual majestic silence.
The hospitable Collector invited out most of his friends, and Betty
asked Mrs. Holroyd, but she remained only two days. She detested rural
life, and so did “Mossoo.” She hated the spear grass that got into
her petticoats and stockings, suspected snakes under every chair, and
became hysterical on an elephant. She longed for her own safe fireside,
her book and her arm-chair. Her husband had declined altogether,
pleading duty. But one evening Mr. Redmond came across Captain La
Touche and him, out shooting, and absolutely refused to take nay--it
was Christmas Eve--he had at least twenty guests--he intended to have
twenty-two--Mrs. Holroyd was in Lucknow, and Mr. Holroyd had not the
ghost of an excuse! There was a grand Christmas dinner--with pretty
Indian jungle decorations, real English plum-pudding, a monster turkey,
and plenty of crackers, and good wishes. Afterwards the company set
out in the moonlight to explore the camp, and visit the elephants and
horses, before assembling around the great log fire to drink punch or
mulled port, and play games. The night was clear and cold; and wrapped
in a long red fur-lined cloak, Betty strolled now with one guest, now
another, and finally found herself pacing the short dry grass--beyond
the tents, with her uncle and George Holroyd! It was a magnificent
Eastern night--such a night as entitles India to be called the land
of the moon, as well as the land of the sun. The scene was almost as
bright as day, and almost as still as death. Behind the Collector lay
his snow-white camp beneath the mango trees--before him, a plateau, on
the edge of which a mosque-shaped tomb stood out in dark relief against
the sky--beyond the tomb, a wide plain, stretching away to the horizon,
a rich cultivated tract, unbroken by aught save an occasional clump of
sugar-cane, an occasional reedy jheel, with its fringe of waving water
plants, and here and there, a great single forest tree.
“How quiet it is out here,” said Betty; “there is not a sound save the
nightjar. I quite miss the bugles at Mangobad.”
“Can you distinguish them?” enquired George.
“No, I don’t think I can--except that one that seems to say, ‘come
home--come home--come home.’”
“The last post,” explained her uncle. “I know them all down to the
advance, ending in three C’s. How many a gallant fellow _it_ has cost
us! Did you get any snipe to-day, Holroyd?”
“Yes, but only four brace.”
“I went out yesterday, myself, to a most lovely spot, an ideal
home for a snipe, and never saw a feather! Just a nice cover; nice
feeding-ground. If I were a snipe, I would go and settle there at once,
and take my family with me.”
“Is it possible that I see people ploughing at this hour, uncle?”
interrupted Betty. “Six ploughs--beyond that brown patch.”
“Very possible! In the indigo season, it’s a common thing for them to
plough all night. I suppose it is ten o’clock now. That reminds me that
I have business with my sheristadar, and I must be going back, but
you, Betty, need not come. Take Holroyd on and show him the tomb, it’s
rather old and curious,” and turning quickly on his heel he left them
abruptly; left them to their first _tête-à-tête_ since they had parted
that July day in the avenue at Noone.
“I must congratulate you on getting your company,” said Betty as they
walked on together. “I heard the news just before dinner--I am so glad.”
Glad she might be, but she could scarcely command her voice. Oh,
why had Uncle Bernard left them? left her without a pretence of
escape. She must make the best of the situation, and summon all her
self-possession and all her woman’s wit, to keep clear of one topic.
“Thank you. Yes, everything comes to those who wait.”
“Belle will be delighted,” she ventured in a sort of panic, fearing
that if she stopped talking he would commence on that subject.
“Yes,” and he added with somewhat dreary levity, “she does not care
about being ‘a subaltern’s poor thing.’” A long pause, during which
their own footsteps on the baked, dry grass, was the only sound.
“I had a letter from Cuckoo last mail,” continued the girl, making a
valiant effort to keep up the conversation; anything, anything, but
this dead suggestive silence.
“Yes, and I had one from my mother. Denis is coming home. He cannot
get any congenial employment, and he and Lizzie don’t seem to hit it
off.”
“I am sorry to hear it, but these hasty marriages do not often turn out
well.” She halted abruptly--her companion’s own marriage had been a
hasty one--and then plunged into another subject.
“I saw you and uncle discussing something very serious this evening
before dinner. When uncle nods his head, and walks with his hands
behind him, I know he is talking of something interesting and
important.”
“Yes, you are quite right. He was talking of _you_.”
“Of me?” with a sort of breathless gasp.
“He has got some wild idea that I have influence with you, and he asked
me, as an old and entirely disinterested friend--not likely to have a
woman’s love of match-making--to speak to you about Mr. Hammond.”
“To speak to me about Mr. Hammond! I am utterly sick of hearing about
Mr. Hammond. Uncle, Mrs. Pope, Mrs. Calvert, can talk of nothing else.”
“He is not young, but he is not old,” continued George, “he is
a remarkably able man, he will be in Council some day, he is an
honourable upright gentleman. I quote your uncle’s words exactly, and
your uncle, although he cannot bear to lose you, says that Hammond
is his personal friend, and he does not wish to stand in the way of
your making a good match, and he asked me to speak to you, as an old
acquaintance, and to beg you to think it over. Think of your carriages,
and diamonds, think of all the ladies old enough to be your mother,
who must walk behind you into a room. Think.” They had now reached the
tomb and were standing at its horse-shoe shaped entrance. He stopped
abruptly, and leaning his shoulder against the wall behind him, looked
hard at his companion.
“Does it not seem strange,” he went on in a totally altered voice,
“that such a mission should be entrusted to _me_--of all men living?”
Betty affected not to notice the change in his manner, and said with
her calmest air, and in a firm tone:
“I like Mr. Hammond immensely as a friend, but he is thirty years older
than I am, and I do not choose----”
“To be an old man’s darling!” supplemented her companion sharply.
“No--I was going to say, change my estate. I am very happy as I am,”
lifting her eyes from the moonlit plain, and looking straight and full
at her questioner.
“Yet I don’t mind betting that before very long you will disappear from
Mangobad amid a cloud of rice, and with the inevitable slipper on the
top of the carriage. Proudfoot is not so ancient.”
Mr. Proudfoot was a handsome and superlatively conceited young
man--(his conceit probably the result of an uncriticised career)--who
played the banjo, and sang sweetly, and constantly assured his lady
friends that he had been _such_ a pretty boy. He paid Betty conspicuous
attention, and was at this moment eagerly searching for her in every
direction, but she and her companion were standing on the far side of
the mosque steps, and its substantial walls were between them and the
camp.
“Shall I tell you a secret?” said Betty suddenly.
“Do,” he returned with a slight start, but recovering himself instantly.
“I cannot endure the Golden Butterfly” (Mr. Proudfoot’s nickname).
“Why--what has he done? Has anyone told you anything?”
“He has told me everything himself,” she returned with a smile into
the grave face beside her. “He dined with us, one evening; we had the
Trotters to dinner too, and he confided to me, as we sat behind the
piano, that when he was at home--I must try and quote his own words as
you did uncle’s--he met Mrs. Trotter in the Park, and she came bustling
up to him; ‘for the life of me,’ he said, ‘I could not remember her
name, though I remembered her face and dinners, for when I was at that
hole, Sonapore, she was there, and I used to be in and out a good
deal. But by George! Sonapore is one place, and London is another, one
does not come home to see one’s _Indian_ friends, eh? I was not going
to allow her to fasten herself on to me, and such a dowdy too! So I
just took off my hat, and walked on--cut her so to speak, and now,
_she_ cuts me!’ What do you think of such a nice, grateful, gentlemanly
young man?”
“I am not surprised--my opinion of him remains unchanged; but he still
seems to find favour in _your_ eyes--he sat beside you at dinner and
appeared to make himself agreeable.”
“He bored me to death, about society at home, and his clubs.”
“Clubs! I don’t believe he ever belonged to one in his life, except a
_Mutton Club_”--remarked Captain Holroyd scornfully. A ghurree in the
camp now struck ten, and turning to her abruptly, he said in a voice
that made her heart stand still:
“Betty, let us drop this hideous farce for five minutes, this Christmas
night, and speak plainly to one another, face to face. I wonder that
you look at me, much less talk and laugh with me, when I know what
you think of me at the bottom of your heart. Wait”--seeing that she
was about to speak--“I never was so astonished, as when I saw you on
our own steps. I had not a suspicion that you were coming out. Had I
known, I would have got an exchange; got leave, got _anything_, that
would have taken me out of the station, and out of your sight, and you
actually offered me your hand--but some women are angels!”
“I am no angel,” returned Betty almost inaudibly, “far from it. Do not
let us speak of the past, it is done with, it is dead. There is no
reason why we should not be friends.”
“Then, Betty,” he exclaimed, looking at her keenly, “_you know_?”
Betty did not speak; she turned away her face, and gazed over the great
far-stretching landscape, bathed in moonlight; she saw nothing of its
placid beauty, for her eyes were dimmed with tears.
“Answer me,” he insisted.
She bowed her head without looking towards him.
“Who told you?” he asked after an appreciable silence.
“Mrs. Redmond,” she replied in a choked voice. “She gave me your letter
to her, before she died.”
“Betty, did I--did she--nearly break your heart?”
“It is all over now,” she returned in a low voice.
“Abominable old woman! As long as I draw breath I shall never forgive
her.”
“Oh, George, do not say that; you must forgive her, you will forgive
her. I have done so long ago. It is all over, and done with _now_, for
ever.” As she spoke her sweet firm lips were set in a line that was
almost stern.
“Over and done with for you--never over for me. But why should I expect
you to care? the past, as you say, is dead, dead and buried. However,
it is some comfort to me, to hear that you know that I was not a
heartless scoundrel.”
“I never thought that,” she returned with a tremor in her voice.
“And I, miserable fool, never doubted a line of Mrs. Redmond’s letter.
I accepted it all with unquestioning conviction. I knew that Moore was
in love with you, and as you were lost to me I married Belle. Belle,
who came out to be my wife in all good faith, believing that I loved
her, and assuring me of her own attachment. She was your cousin. She
was homeless and friendless in this country, and totally unsuspicious
of her mother’s crime--for it _was_ a crime--I could not send her back,
shamed and slighted, to Ballingoole. I did what I believed any man
of honour would do--I married her. I did not care what became of the
rest of my life--and I gave it to her, no great gift!--and I honestly
meant to make the best of things for her sake--but oh--my God--!” he
exclaimed hoarsely--“if I had only known the truth!”
Betty listened, with white parted lips, and then said in a low voice:
“And _she_ must never know.”
“No--of course not. I am glad I had this chance of speaking to you at
last, and thankful for what you tell me--to hear that you knew the
truth--to know that you did not feel----”
“Not feel,” she echoed with a start, and a thrill in her voice.
“George, I too will speak, just once--and never again. It cannot be
wrong to tell you now--that it did nearly break my heart, it was so
unexpected, so sudden, and I was--” she was about to add “so fond
of you,” but looking into her companion’s penetrating dark eyes,
she faltered--“I could tell no one--I had to bear it alone--no one
knows--no one ever will know, only you and me! But I could not let you
suppose that I did not feel--and, George, as it is all over now--as it
was not to be--let us not be cowards.”
“No,” he interrupted fiercely. “Once I was going to shoot myself, but
you see I thought better of it.”
“Let us not be cowards,” she repeated with quivering lips. “Let us
make the very most of our lives, and try and make other people happy.
When I hear of you doing something good and noble, that will be _my_
happiness.”
Tears were very near the beautiful eyes, that looked with sad
wistfulness into his.
“And when I hear of your marriage with some wealthy Civilian,” he
sneered, “I suppose that is to be _mine_.”
“Oh! George,” she exclaimed, with two large tears now trickling down
her face, “don’t talk in that way. It is not like you! You once told me
that a man could be whatever he willed--man is man and master of his
fate--you are still the master of yours.”
“My fate was too strong for me! Mrs. Redmond herself, like one of those
ancient witches, cut it across with a pair of shears. It is not her
fault, that I have not gone to the devil. I believe I shall get there
yet.”
“No, you are only saying this to frighten me, and I am not afraid. You
will make the best of your life. You will forgive and forget.”
“Never!”
“Yes--I know you better than you do yourself although you _are_ so
changed!” the last words came in a kind of sob.
“Changed!” he echoed with sudden compunction. “Yes, but not so changed
as to behave like a brute to you! Forgive me, Betty--I will--I do--try
to forgive, but I shall not try to forget. I will shake off, if I can,
the sort of deadly paralysis that comes over me--I shall volunteer for
our next little war. As for you, whatever good luck you have”--and
he gulped down something in his throat--“no matter in what shape it
comes--and whatever happiness may fall into your life--it will be good
fortune and happiness for me. Betty, do you remember Juggy at the gate
lodge? She said you had a lucky face! And I have a strong presentiment
that you were not born to trouble, but that you have many bright days
in store for you somewhere. As for myself----”
He paused, for Mr. Proudfoot, still searching, had suddenly turned the
corner of the tomb, and stood within three yards of him. It was almost
on that young man’s lips to say “I beg your pardon,” for Holroyd was
as white as death, and Miss Redmond had been crying. Yes, she had
actually her handkerchief in her hand, although she exclaimed, with
wonderful composure, “Oh, Mr. Proudfoot, I am quite ready. I suppose
uncle has sent you to look for me. I had no idea it was so late. I must
go back at once,” and she hurried down the steps, accompanied by the
two men. Half way to camp, they encountered Mr. Redmond, who called out
in his loud, cheery voice:
“Well, Holroyd, what do you think of the tomb? Rather fine, is it
not? They say it was built by Jahangir.” Holroyd muttered something
inarticulate. Neither he nor Betty had cast one single glance at the
object of their walk. They might as well have been standing beside a
blank wall, for all the interest they had taken in this tomb, which
was one of the sights of the district.
Betty went straight to her tent, and was seen no more that evening, and
George departed from the camp at daybreak. The reason of this sudden
move was explained by Mr. Proudfoot in the strictest confidence to some
half-dozen listeners:
“Holroyd and Miss Redmond had had no end of a shindy, and he had walked
into the thick of it behind the big tomb--no doubt that little devil
Mrs. Holroyd had made some mischief between them.”
CHAPTER IX.
SOMETHING TO READ.
“And thereby hangs a tale.”
--OTHELLO.
With the first appearance of punkhas, and the first “notice about
ice” most of the people at Mangobad fled away to Simla, Mussoorie, or
Naini-Tal--chiefly to Naini-Tal. Mr. Redmond’s face was an amusing
study (in black) when Belle suggested in her most kittenish and
effusive manner, that “she should share a house with him, as George
could only get two months’ leave, and that it would be great fun
to live together!” but Mr. Redmond grimly declined this unalluring
proposition in a few brief words, and subsequently (purposely) took a
mansion that set the whole length of the lake, and a distance of two
miles, between his abode and Mrs. Holroyd’s cheap, damp, out-of-the-way
little bungalow--for Belle was now nothing if not economical, and
thrifty, to the verge of parsimony, save in the matter of her personal
adornment. Naini-Tal, named after the goddess Naini (or Nynee), is a
lake that lies six thousand feet above the plains, in the lap of the
Himalayas; the surrounding hills rise from the edge of the water and
are covered with houses half hidden among trees. These houses are
reached by narrow paths, in some instances goat tracks, and the only
means of locomotion is either on a pony’s back, or in a jhampan or
dandy, carried on the shoulders of four men. A jhampan--the gondola
of the hills--is something between a chair and a coffin, and, to an
uneducated eye, the first glimpse of Naini-Tal, with its crowds of
people being borne along, suggests the victims of some frightful
colliery or railway accident. But a nearer inspection shows smartly
dressed ladies, reclining in gaily painted dandies, and borne by
jhampannies in gorgeous liveries. Each memsahib dresses her bearers
brilliantly, and racks her brains to devise some novelty that will
distinguish her from the rest of her neighbours! You can descry her
while she is yet afar off. You know where she is calling, and where
she is shopping, when you see her blazing team squatting outside--with
the surreptitious _huka_--awaiting her reappearance. Now you meet a
green and yellow set, next a scarlet and blue, after that, an orange
and crimson, jostling others who are all orange. What burlesques of
family liveries! What travesties of monograms emblazoned on the
bearers’ broad chests! Naini-Tal is a pretty place, especially by
moonlight, or when the surrounding hills are reflected in the lake. It
is in the shape of a cup, or a great extinct crater, and you have to
climb a thousand feet to get a view of the line of everlasting snows,
commanded, as it were, by Nunga-Devi, the “Storm Goddess,” standing out
sternly against the steel-blue sky. The only flat space is the Mall
round the lake, and the polo ground. There are lovely walks, if you do
not object to stiff climbing, and once arrived you find yourself, as
it were, lost in the woods, among moss and rocks and overhanging trees
with thick fringes of ferns covering their outspread branches. Here
you get a peep of the lake--there of the distant blue plains. True,
these walks have some drawbacks. They are excessively slippery in
damp weather, and panthers lie in wait for dogs (and are particularly
partial to fox terriers), moreover, greedy leeches accompany the
unsuspecting pedestrian to his, or her, own house. Naini-Tal is gay!
What popular hill station is not? Balls, races--yes, races--regattas,
and picnics; theatricals, tableaux, and concerts all succeed one
another in rapid succession, and when early in May new arrivals come
swarming up from the plains, the hotels are crammed, and every day
half-a-dozen new sets of jhampannies, carrying a new memsahib, appear
on the Mall, and dozens of gallant sahibs come cantering up from
the Brewery, with a syce clinging to their ponies’ tails, who would
believe in that terrible story about Friday, the 18th September, 1880,
when, after two days’ torrents of rain, during which everyone was a
prisoner to the house, and cut off from their neighbours, there was
a hollow rumble--then arose a red, dusty cloud, like fire, and when
that cloud had dispersed, and the mist had lifted, the Assembly Rooms,
the Victoria Hotel, and several houses had been effaced--swept away
and engulfed in a moment, and with them a hundred souls. There are
occasional little landslips during the monsoon. Rocks come thundering
down, tons of earth crumble off, the cart road “goes” annually, but
on the whole Naini-Tal is considered as safe as its neighbours. High
up on a hill among rocks and trees, in a somewhat inaccessible spot,
you come across a board on which is painted, “Captain Holroyd, Royal
Musketeers,” and near it a box for visitors’ cards (which is almost
always empty). If you follow the path, you arrive at a dreary-looking,
one-storeyed house, with no view, and the reputation of being very
damp, and of having a family of needy panthers among the surrounding
rocks. If you penetrated to the drawing-room, the chances are ten to
one that you would find Belle cowering over the fire with a shawl
on her shoulders and “Mossoo” in her lap, and two to one in a bad
temper--both mistress and dog alike victims to ennui. “She was no
one up here,” she grumbled to Betty every time she saw her. “_She_
was a Collector’s niece, and asked out to big dinners every night,
and taken to picnics up Diopatha and Iopatha, or down to Douglas
Dale, but of course that was partly because Mr. Redmond entertained!
_She_ did not (and so much the better for Naini-Tal). They had got
up theatricals--people that knew nothing about them, that could not
act one little bit, and they had never even consulted her, or asked
her to take a part. Of course that was all jealousy, and pitifully
transparent! They had heard of her acting at Lucknow, and Mangobad, and
seen the account of it in the papers, and were afraid of her cutting
them all out. Her reputation had come up before her (it had indeed),
and George said it was too soon after her mother’s death to go to
balls--George was so peculiar,” and so on, in the same strain for about
an hour. Belle arrayed her jhampannies in the smartest suits in the
station, and excited quite a sensation as she was carried triumphantly
along the Mall. But alas! She had only the clothes now, and no _men_ to
wear them; and without jhampannies a lady is comparatively a prisoner.
As a class, these sturdy, jovial, brown hill men are most independent;
give them wood tickets, their mornings to themselves, and no late
hours, and no heavy passengers--give them smart suits and caps, and
warm blankets, and they will take you out once or--peradventure at a
pinch--twice a day, without grumbling. But when a lady, be she ever so
light, is always calling for them and harrying them, when she takes
them long and steep paths to pay needless visits, and beats them with
her parasol, why they figuratively snap their fingers at her and
go!--and what is worse, they boycott her in the bazaars. Belle was in a
bad plight; she could only join the giddy throng below at the Assembly
Rooms, or round the lake, and polo ground, when she could obtain
coolies at double fare!
On these days, smartly dressed in what _she_ called second mourning,
she descended and paraded the Mall with Betty, went out in a wherry
with George, had tea and ices at Morrison’s shop and enjoyed herself
considerably, forgetting for the time her woes, her hateful servants,
and her dismal, murky house.
At the opposite end of the lake, in a good situation, you come upon
a fine two-storeyed abode, with Mr. Redmond’s name on the gate board
and Miss Redmond’s box full of cards. He was popular, despite his
eccentricities; everyone knew that if his bark was loud, his bite was
nil; and Betty was much admired as she rode along the Mall and walked
on the “Berm” between rows of discriminating British subalterns,
sitting on the rails arrayed in boating flannels and gorgeous
“blazers.” She was in constant request, as Belle had complained, but
gave up many a pleasant engagement (to boat, to ride, to play tennis)
to climb that weary hill, and to sit with that querulous, discontented
little creature; who imperatively demanded her visits, and yet when she
came, never ceased to scold her sharply for her dress, her friends, and
her airs!
* * * * *
The monsoon broke with a violence peculiar to the Himalayas, the rains
descended, and the floods came foaming down the mountains, the same
mountains and the lake being swallowed up in mist, and all but the
most stout-hearted (and booted) were prisoners to the house. Belle was
alone. She was laid up with fever, and she wrote such a piteous scrawl,
that Betty, in spite of her uncle’s angry expostulation, consented to
go to her, and cheer her up and stay a week! She evolved some order
in that cheerless home, tidied up the drawing-room, put away Belle’s
old “chits” and papers, and scraps, and “Mossoo’s” bones, coaxed some
servants into the empty godowns, for there was not one on the premises,
but a deaf old ayah and a waterman. Belle enjoyed the transformation
and the company of a bright companion, and was better, and out, and
gay. At the end of the week, George returned from a signalling class at
Ranikhet, rode in quite unexpectedly, and his arrival was an excuse for
Betty’s immediate departure, but Belle in vehement language that almost
bordered on violent words, insisted that her cousin must remain one day
longer, in order to be present at a little dinner party that included
Captain La Touche and a neighbouring married couple. Her popular cousin
was her social trump card; moreover, she looked to her to make the
sweets, and decorate the table.
But when the hour came, although dressed, Belle felt too ill to
appear. She had got her feet wet. She had a cold, and sore throat, and
she was forced to stay in her own room by the fire, and dine in company
with “Mossoo.”
She felt excessively irritable and ill-used, as the sounds of merry
laughing and talking came from the adjoining dining-room; _they_
were having a very good time, and she--how dull she felt! She had no
amusement, not even a book; she rose and searched about for something
to read. She went, as a last resource, into George’s dressing-room,
but there she could find no food for her mind, save sundry Manuals
of Infantry Drill and of Field Exercises, and half a dozen red-bound
“Royal Warrants.” She was turning disconsolately away, when her
eyes fell upon his _keys_. Of these he was always so careful--so
suspiciously careful--and never left them about. Happy thought! She
could amuse herself unusually well, in having a good rummage through
his dispatch box. Perhaps she would discover some of his secrets. A
husband had no business to have secrets from his wife; perhaps she
would discover something about what she mentally called “the other
girl.” With this honourable intention she carried the box into her own
room, placed it on a table near the fire, and sat herself deliberately
down before it. The key was easily found, and as easily turned in the
lock; the lid was thrown open, and the upper tray scrutinised. Nothing
but a cheque book, a banker’s book, some papers and envelopes, and a
Manual on Musketry. In the lower compartment were some of his mother’s
letters, a packet of paid bills, some recipes for dogs and horses, and
at the bottom of all a sealed parcel. She felt it carefully. Yes--it
contained a cabinet photograph--_the_ photograph; she must, and would,
see what the creature was like.
In a second the cover was torn off. But--but, who was this? holding it
to the lamp with a shaking hand.
_Betty!_
At first, she could not realise the full extent of her discovery,
she simply stared, and panted, and trembled. It meant nothing! Then
her eye caught sight of the other contents of the packet--a little
well-remembered brooch, a withered flower, and a letter in her mother’s
handwriting.
As she read this, her breast heaved convulsively, the veins in her
forehead stood out like cords, her fingers twitched, so that the paper
between them rattled and was torn.
When she had come to the very end of it, she sat with her eyes fixed,
her hands to her head, as if she had received a galvanic shock. “To
think that all along it was Betty, the hypocrite, the viper, the
wretch, that robbed me of my husband’s love. Oh, how I hate her! How I
loathe her! How I wish she was dead! I see it all--all now. She stole
him from me that time she went to the Moores, and oh, how false she has
been ever since. How well they have kept their secret. I shall never
believe in any one again, not in a saint from heaven. And I, poor fool,
asking if she _ever_ had a love affair! Oh, I could tear her to pieces.
I could, I could,” and she gnashed her teeth, and clenched her hands,
and “Mossoo” fled into hiding under a chest of drawers.
Not a thought of remorse for two lives sacrificed for her, not a
thought of any one but herself, and her wrongs.
_Now_, she saw why George avoided Betty, at least, in public; now
by the light of her discovery she saw everything; many puzzling
circumstances were as plain as A, B, C, and here, at this present
moment, that abominable girl was under her roof, sitting in _her_
place, and entertaining her guests! Oh! Oh! Oh! it was past all
endurance, and she began to pace the room almost at a run; her fury
rising like a gale at sundown. She must wait (if she could) till
those people had gone; it was after eleven; they must leave soon, and
_then_----
It was a fearful night. Thunder rolled and crashed among the mountains,
the rain came down on the zinc roof with a deafening roar, the paths
were foaming water-courses, the water-courses boiling rivers; and now
and then a furious blast shook the house to its foundation.
At last the laughing and talking ceased, the merry company had
departed. She saw their lanterns dimly through the mist, and instantly
rushed into the drawing-room. Betty was there, busily putting away
cards and counters, and George, who had been speeding his guests, stood
in the doorway.
In her furious precipitation, Belle knocked over a chair, and they both
turned and saw her--saw her livid, distorted face, compressed lips and
glittering eyes--that looked as if they were illuminated by some inward
flame--and knew but too well what these signs portended.
“So,” she screamed, her piercing voice distinct above the thundering
rain. “So I have found you both out at last! Oh! you false wretch,”
shaking her own photograph at Betty, “how I would like to strangle
you! You, that we all thought so quiet, so modest, and that was engaged
all the time on the sly. You artful, bad girl, you robbed me--_me_--of
his affections,” pointing to George. “He liked me first, he liked me
best. He dares not deny it! I must say this for him, that whatever he
is, he is no liar.”
All the time she was speaking--screaming, it might be called--she was
tearing the photograph into atoms, with feverish, frenzied fingers, and
with the word _liar_, she dashed them into Betty’s face.
“Belle,” said her husband sternly, “what are you about? Have you taken
leave of your senses? What do you mean by treating your cousin in this
way?”
“There,” she shrieked, “there, you take her part. You try and blind me
still! Have I gone out of my senses? No, but I am _going_ out of them!
I have opened your box, I have read my mother’s letter. I know all. How
dared you marry me?”
After this question, there was a pause for ten seconds, the rain and
wind alone broke the silence, whilst the raging woman, from whom every
restraint had fallen away, awaited his answer.
“I married you,” speaking with painful slowness, “because I thought it
was the only thing to be done under the circumstances. I did my best to
make you happy, I hoped----”
“Hoped! Thought!” she interrupted, shaking from head to foot. “Who
cares what you hoped or thought?” And then she broke into a torrent of
passion, in which scathing, scorching words seemed to pour from her
lips one over the other, like a stream of lava. This, to the couple who
had been mercilessly sacrificed for her advantage.
“Betty,” said George abruptly, “this is no scene for you; go to your
own room.”
“To her room! go out of the house, go _now_!” cried Belle, stamping her
foot; “now, this second, do you hear me?”
“To-morrow,” interrupted her husband, “not to-night, you could not turn
a dog out in such weather.”
“No, but I would turn out a snake, a viper, a cobra.”
“You may be certain that Betty is not anxious to trespass on your
hospitality, but she will stay as a favour, she shall not go out on
such a night, I will not allow it,” he returned firmly.
“Very well then, _I’ll_ go! The Burns will take me in. I refuse to
remain under the same roof with that girl for another five minutes.”
“Do not be afraid, Belle, I will go,” said Betty, who had been hitherto
too stunned to move or speak. “I will go this moment. You are a cruel
woman, you have wronged both George and me, and you will be sorry for
all you have said to-morrow.”
Belle’s voice drowned hers in furious protestations to the contrary,
and she hastened away, threw on a waterproof, and twisted a scarf round
her head, whilst George called for a syce and a lantern.
“Belle,” he said, as he re-entered, putting on his top-coat, and his
face looked white and set. “This is about the last straw! God knows
that I have done my best, or tried to do my best for you. After this
we will live apart--apart for ever.”
Before she had time to reply, he was gone, he had quitted the room, and
she saw him and Betty go forth into the sheets of rain, and the black
surrounding darkness, in the wake of a syce with an oilskin cape over
his head, and a lantern in his hand. She watched the trio descend the
hill, till they and their flickering light were lost to sight.
Then she went and sat down beside the dying fire--feeling somewhat
exhausted--and assured herself that she had done well, had acted as any
other wife of spirit would have done, but her fury was abating and her
confidence with it; cold remorse began to whisper in her ear, as she
listened to the booming of the thunder and the roaring of the rain;
they had nearly three miles to go by the long road, and Betty was in
her evening dress and shoes! Of course George did not care for Betty
_now_; even her distorted mind could not summon the ghost of a charge
against him. She glanced over past months, with the piercing eye of a
jealous wife. No, there was not a word or a glance, by which she could
arraign him.
He had got over it ages ago. Betty would marry some wealthy man,
and George was _her_ husband. She must forgive them! At the end of
half-an-hour’s solitary meditation, during which she had reckoned up
her probable allowance and probable prospects at home, she actually had
absolved them both. Betty had no business to have had an understanding
with George when she was a mere child--and of course did not know her
own mind; but Betty had always been good to her, forbearing, generous,
and useful. Only that very morning she had cooked her a dainty little
dish to tempt her appetite, and she had gone down in all the rain to
get her a remedy for her cold, and a novel from the library.
And George? yes, he was good to her too; he never refused her money, he
never flirted with other women, he always remembered her birthday, he
wrote regularly when she was from home, and punctually met her at the
station on her return. If he was cold and reserved, and hated French
poodles, it was his nature, and he could not help himself. Looking
round among the Lords and Masters of her numerous acquaintances, she
could not name a woman who had a better husband than her own.
And supposing he had really meant what he said? There was a strange
expression in his eyes,--a look that she had never seen there before,
not even after she threw the tennis-bat at Mrs. Monkton! And once, in
a passion, another lady told her that she wondered Mr. Holroyd did not
get a divorce for incompatibility of temper! But no, no; nothing but
death should ever part them. Her Australian trip had shown her one
thing most distinctly--that alone, and unprotected by her popular,
gentlemanly husband, she was a very helpless and insignificant little
person. What was she to do? Perhaps he would never come back! The bare
idea filled her with dismay. She was now all penitence (as usual). She
would follow them instantly to Mr. Redmond’s door. She would make it
up; she would abase herself; she would go by the short cut across the
hill, and be there almost as soon as they were! No sooner thought than
done. She ran into her room, and put on a cloak, and a pair of strong
shoes, and going into the back verandah, called imperatively for a lamp
and a guide.
But what hill servant, sleeping comfortably in his “comlee,” would
respond to the screams of a bad memsahib--demanding a light and
attendant, at one o’clock, and on such a night? As she had sowed, she
reaped. No answer came, not a sound, not a sign, from the cluster
of godowns at the back; for once she refrained from rousing them in
person. She had no time to lose. She was obliged to hunt up a lantern,
and to light and carry it herself; and with “Mossoo” for her sole
escort, she set forth in the streaming downpour, and started rapidly up
the hill.
CHAPTER X.
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
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