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Title: Interference, Vol. I (of 3)
A novel
Author: B. M. Croker
Release date: November 12, 2023 [eBook #72104]
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. I (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. I.
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.--BALLINGOOLE 1
II.--GOSSIP--(WITHOUT TEA) 19
III.--THE MALONES OF BRIDGETSTOWN 39
IV.--MRS. MALONE OPENS HER MOUTH 68
V.--FOXY JOE 93
VI.--DANGEROUS 119
VII.--ONLY JONES 138
VIII.--MISS DOPPING TO THE RESCUE 157
IX.--CLANCY’S COLT 177
X.--BETTY MAKES TWO CONQUESTS 200
INTERFERENCE.
CHAPTER I.
BALLINGOOLE.
“So sleeps the pride of other days.”
The town of Ballingoole has always awakened a certain amount of
respectful surprise in the minds of strangers; it is so amazingly
unlike its name! According to tourists who wish to pay it an
extravagant compliment, it actually recalls a fine old English village,
and, indeed, in its palmy days, Ballingoole would not have considered
itself at all flattered by the comparison. Fifty years ago it was the
stronghold of one of the most rigidly exclusive circles in the south of
Ireland.
The wide hilly street was lined by noble and imposing residences, that
looked as if they had quitted country parks and pleasure grounds, and
flocked together for company; liberally planned gardens--celebrated for
fruit and roses--sloped away from French windows at the rear of these
mansions, to the very brink of a slow, brown canal--once glorified by
fly boats, galloping teams and gay passengers, but now abandoned to
lethargic barges, bearing freights of turf and manure. In the good old
days the town was peopled by retired officers (naval and military),
wealthy widows, and well-born spinsters, and actually numbered a
baronet, and the brother of a viscount among its tenants.
There was an extensive collection of the best society in Ballingoole
in former times; whist parties--concluding with very potent negus,
goloshes and lanterns--substantial dinners, with weighty joints,
strawberry fêtes, and hunt breakfasts, were of common occurrence. To
tell the truth, “the town” was somewhat exclusive, and secretly turned
up its nose at most of the county folk; but now, alas! times were
changed, and the county turned up its nose at the town.
As years went on, ancient inhabitants who remembered the illuminations
after Waterloo, and told anecdotes of George the Fourth, had been
gradually gathered to their family vaults, and there was no inducement
for other gentry to take their places. Some of the finest houses were
let in tenements, and displayed small washings fluttering from upper
windows. Several stood empty, with rusty area-railings, and shattered
panes. Over the late abode of a baronet, hung three weather-beaten
golden balls, and the mansion in which Mrs. General Moriarty once held
her famous routs and card parties, thinks itself very lucky to be no
worse than the police barrack!
Yes, the big houses now merge into shops, the shops into one-storeyed
cottages, and the cottages into squat mud hovels, at the foot of the
hill, down which Ballingoole has been going in more ways than one, for
many years past. At the head of the street, two residences are still
let to genteel tenants. Mrs. Finny, a doctor’s widow, and her daughter;
and Miss Dopping, an eccentric old maid, occupy the best houses in
the place, for the traditional old song. This is a consideration with
Mrs. Finny, a lady with a limited income; but Miss Dopping is rich,
and could afford herself a house in Park Lane, if so disposed. She is
the last of her family, the sole legatee of more than one comfortable
fortune, but no one would suppose it from her appearance, as she stalks
down the street, tall, gaunt and shabby. Although upwards of seventy
years of age, she is as erect as a lamp-post, having been reared in the
great back-board period; and, despite her rusty black bonnet, frieze
cloak, and ridiculous purple woollen gloves, there is no mistaking her
for anything but a lady.
It was a soft November afternoon; the hedges were not yet quite bare;
the haws--signs of a hard winter--clustered in thick red bunches, and
yellow leaves, from overhanging beeches, fluttered reluctantly into the
muddy road. There was not a sound to be heard in this still country
spot, save the distant rattle of an ass’s car, and the clump of Miss
Dopping’s umbrella, as she trudged along a foot-path, but few degrees
drier than the highway, _en route_ to pay her quarterly visit of
ceremony, to her neighbour, Mrs. Redmond of Noone.
Another half mile of the greasy foot-path, and a lofty wall, topped
with firs, comes into view, also a pair of big iron gates (once green),
also a winding avenue--which is very green indeed--lined with dripping
trees and over-grown laurels. In answer to a scream of “gate” in Miss
Dopping’s cracked falsetto, a fat old woman, with a shawl over her head
and a key on her finger, came waddling out of the lodge, and said as
she curtseyed profoundly:
“Good evening to you, me lady--a fine, soft day.”
“And how are you, Juggy?” enquired Miss Dopping, with a keen glance
into Juggy’s round, red face.
“Faix, but poorly, me lady. I have had a cruel turn of them
rheumatics; they catches me here, and here, and here”--clutching her
elbows, back and knees, to illustrate her sufferings. “I feel as if I
was being crucified, like the saints and martyrs, but a good flannel
petticoat would put the life in me,” and she stared significantly at
her interlocutor.
“It’s only the damp weather--I feel it myself,” returned Miss Dopping
unsympathetically. “Any one above?” pointing up the avenue with
her notable umbrella--an immense alpaca construction of distended
proportions, likewise remarkable for a huge ivory handle, representing
Death’s head. When remonstrated with upon the subject of its size and
age, its owner invariably replied:
“It was good enough for my mother, and is good enough for me, and will
wear out fifty of your nasty flimsy gimcracks.”
“Yes, me lady, I am afther opening the gate for Mrs. Finny and Miss
Maria.”
Miss Dopping ejaculated something inaudible, and looked over her
shoulder, as if she had a mind to retreat.
“You may as well go up, ma’am,” urged Juggy, possibly divining her
thoughts, “since you _are_ so far. They are in it a good hour or more,
and bid to be going soon, for there’s no tay, or cake and wine offered
_these_ times!”
“Now what are they doing out here?” muttered the old lady to herself,
as she plodded up the avenue. “They were here three days ago to my
certain knowledge.”
“Oh! so that’s you, Pat?” to a shock-haired urchin, with bare red legs,
who burst though the laurels, with a grin of expectation on his dirty
little keen face.
“Let me see,” diving into her pocket as she spoke, “were you at school
to-day?”
“Begorra, I was, ma’am.”
“Then spell Ballingoole?”
Pat became painfully red, and his grin faded.
“Well, well, then never mind,” producing a little knitted jug,
containing coppers, and placing three pennies in his ready palm--
“Have you been out dark fowling since?”
“No, ma’am,” was his reply,--but he lied unto her.
“Because if you ever do such a cruel thing again, as blazing lanterns
into poor birds’ eyes, and knocking them down with sticks, you have
seen the last of my coppers, as sure as my name is Sarah Dopping; so
mind _that_,” and with an emphatic thump of her umbrella, she tramped
on.
The avenue at Noone was not imposingly long, and in a few minutes Miss
Dopping had turned the corner, and was almost at the hall door.
Noone House was a straggling building, with no pretensions to beauty,
dignity, or even antiquity--merely a big, grey mansion, with three
rows of windows, and a glass porch, overlooking a low flat demesne,
fringed with rows of dreary fir-trees. The back of Noone was flanked
by a fine, old, seasoned garden, and many acres of worthless woods,
which swarmed with rabbits. The land was poor and marshy--not to
say boggy--neither useful nor ornamental, and the rabbits were an
important item in Mrs. Redmond’s income. She was the widow of an idle
Irish gentleman, with a magnificent pedigree and a meagre fortune,
who had departed this life, leaving her two hundred a year and one
fair daughter--and she had endeavoured to make the most of both. At
eighteen, Isabel Redmond was a remarkably handsome girl, the cynosure
of many eyes, as she and her mother paraded about in showy costumes, to
the strains of a seaside band. She was unusually lively: she could sing
pretty little French songs, and act and dance in a sprightly manner,
and was taken up, and asked about, by discriminating matrons--with no
unmarried daughters--and more than once had been upon the brink of
an enviable match. Mrs. Redmond was ambitious, and her anticipations
in the shape of a son-in-law modestly stopped just short of royalty.
She strained every nerve--and she was an energetic woman--to dress
her idol with fitting display, and to carry her into the most popular
haunts of men (eligible men). Garrison towns, where cavalry were
quartered, French watering places, and German spas, affected by rich
and gouty bachelors, were visited in turn by Mrs. and Miss Redmond.
These visits were brilliant, if brief; they generally made some gay,
agreeable acquaintances--“birds of passage” like themselves, who voted
them charming, and loudly regretted their departure--as did also their
too trustful tradespeople, for Mrs. Redmond had a bad memory for
small bills. She was an indefatigable chaperon, the most industrious
and intriguing of her sex; and no galley slave, toiling at his oar,
under the blazing Mediterranean sun, worked harder than she did at the
business--the vital business--of keeping up appearances, and “getting
Isabella settled.”
To say that the army list, the county families, and the peerage, were
at her fingers’ ends, may give some faint idea of her reading. As to
writing, she was an untiring scribe, and deservedly merited a private
secretary; corresponding with important acquaintances, with distant,
aged, and wealthy connections, plying all with graceful, flattering
letters, ditto photographs of Belle, and expensive Christmas cards;
snatching ravenously at vague invitations; following up marching
regiments, and anxiously courting the female relatives of rich young
men. After ten years of knocking about Vanity Fair, the most pushing
and plausible of vendors, her wares were no longer in their first
freshness, and alas! still unsold; for Miss Isabel, though beautiful,
was said to have a cold heart, a hot temper, and a head as empty as
her purse. Connections had died, and made no sign. Correspondents
were dumb; promising partners of Belle’s had revoked miserably and
fled; fine acquaintances averted their eyes from what they considered
a shabby old sponge, with a _passée_ daughter, and the poor-house
loomed immediately in her foreground. Mrs. Redmond was at the end of
her credit and resources, and struggling in an angry sea of debt, when
Providence threw her a plank. Old Brian Redmond, one of her many irons
in the fire, having quarrelled with all his near relatives, departed
this life, leaving (to spite the proverbially hated heir-at-law)
Noone House and lands “to the pleasant widow woman with the pretty
daughter”--whom by the way he had never seen.
Joy! Joy! one of the widow woman’s many sprats had caught a salmon at
last!
Naturally she was enchanted at her good fortune, but--there is always
a but. The bequest was in Ireland, the best country in the world to
live out of, in her opinion, and she was obliged to agree to two
stipulations before she could call Noone her own. In the first place,
she must guarantee to reside on the premises, and, secondly, she must
share her home with, and be “a mother” to, Brian Redmond’s orphan
grand-niece--a relative to whom he bequeathed a legacy of two hundred
pounds a year. If Mrs. Redmond objected to these clauses, she had
the remedy in her own hands, and Noone passed on to another remote
connection, one of the Redmonds of Ballyredmond--a childless, rich,
old man. Mrs. Redmond hated the conditions of the will, but she was
socially and financially bankrupt; better to exist in Ireland, than to
starve in England; her health was bad, her energy abated, and after
wearying the inmates of a cheap London boarding-house, with pompous
boastings of “my place in Ireland,” “my shooting,” “my Irish property,”
went over, and entered into her kingdom, with a curious mixture of
satisfaction and disgust. She had now been residing on her own acres
for three years, saving and scraping with extraordinary enjoyment,
ignoring ancient debts, and discovering a fresh and novel interest in
leasing the rabbit warrens, selling fruit, fowl and turf, keeping few
servants, no equipages, and finding her excitements in small country
gossip, feuds with the butcher, and startling domestic economies. There
was also old Brian’s other legacy--Elizabeth, or Betty, Redmond, with
her two hundred pounds a year, which her self-styled “Aunt” coolly
appropriated for her board and lodging, having removed her from school
when she was seventeen years of age, believing that she could find a
more excellent use at home for Betty and her money--in which belief
the astute old lady was subsequently most fully justified. But enough
of the inmates of Noone. For all this time we are keeping Miss Dopping
shivering on its hall door steps. At first she rang gently, but firmly.
After a pause, firmly, but not gently. Finally, a wild passionate peal;
and then the distant slamming of doors, and a heavy deliberate footfall
came in answer to her summons.
Miss Dopping was unmistakably put out, because there had been a delay
in letting her in, and when the servant volunteered to part her and
her umbrella, she was, to say the least of it, a little short in her
manner. The old lady was presently ushered into a drawing-room, cold
as a vault. From an adjoining apartment, the babble of female tongues
and shrill laughter was distinctly audible; in a few minutes she was
requested to “step into the study,” and here she discovered Mrs. and
Miss Redmond, and Mrs. and Miss Finny, disposed in four arm-chairs,
round a comfortable turf fire.
CHAPTER II.
GOSSIP--(WITHOUT TEA).
“Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women.”
--RICHARD III.
“Dear me, Miss Dopping!” exclaimed her hostess, rising with an effort
from the depths of a low seat. “This is indeed an unexpected pleasure.
It is ages since I have seen you! Do come near the fire. Ah, I forgot,
you are not one of its worshippers, like me. I would rather dispense
with my dinner than my fire!”
“You would not say that, if you had tried it,” rejoined Miss Dopping,
seating herself bolt upright, and gazing sharply around her.
Mrs. Redmond shook her head from side to side, like a great pendulum,
and leant back in her chair, and crossed her arms over her extensive
waist. She was a majestic matron, dressed in black, with heavy regular
features, little hard yellowish eyes, and a deliberate delivery. Her
thick grey hair was covered with a black cap, and her plump hands with
a pair of soiled grey kid gloves, minus their finger-tops.
Isabel or Belle--“Belle and the Dragon” were the names by which she
and her mother were known in certain profane circles--lounged in an
easy attitude in a basket chair, holding an _Irish Times_ between her
face and the fire. It was a handsome face, and she did well to protect
it. Belle was a young lady of, shall we say, seven and twenty?--at any
rate she says so herself, and looks no more, and of course every woman
is the age she looks--with a pair of dangerous black eyes, straight
black brows, a short upper lip, a pointed chin, and a sufficient supply
of wavy dark hair. A small, graceful figure and a slender foot, were
not the least of her attractions. But at present, neither figure nor
foot are seen to any advantage, for she wears a dilapidated old red
tea-gown, with ragged laces and stained front, and a pair of extremely
_passée_ slippers. In fact Belle’s toilette must not be too closely
scanned.
“Now, don’t look at me! Don’t look at me,” she said, gesticulating
with much animation, and playfully holding the newspaper between Miss
Dopping and herself. “I know I am an awful object; but in winter, I
never adorn myself unless I am going out--there is no one to dress
for!”
“No _men_, you mean,” amended Miss Dopping, severely.
“Yes, I do. There is not a man at this side of Ballingoole, except
Major Malone and Dr. Doran.”
“And _he_ is an old woman,” observed Miss Finny tartly--but naturally
the daughter of the late practitioner had but scant mercy on her
father’s successor.
“You are a great visitor these times, Mrs. Finny,” remarked Miss
Dopping, pointedly.
“Well, dear, just once in a way, you know,” returned Mrs. Finny
apologetically. “Only just once in a way.”
She was a meek little lady, with a pretty, faded face, and a plaintive
whine in her voice, totally different from her tall, masculine-looking
daughter, who had hard features, a square jaw, and a mouth like
the slit of a letter-box--and in that mouth a renowned and dreaded
tongue--Maria Finny was about forty-five years of age, embittered
against all mankind, and the implacable enemy of the young and
well-favoured of her own sex. Poor Maria! In her life there had been
but little sunshine, and not one ray of love, or the shadow of a lover.
A long monotonous tale without a plot, without a hero--she had not even
a hobby or a pet, she did not read, paint or write; she superintended
the scanty _ménage_, she ruled her mother, and lived meagrely and
discontentedly, an aggrieved, soured woman, with an unfulfilled youth,
and a bleak, hopeless future; and yet Maria had ten times more capacity
for passionate, unselfish love than brilliant Belle Redmond with her
enchanting smile and sympathetic eyes. Perhaps, if Maria’s upper lip
had been half an inch shorter, if her mouth had been of more reasonable
dimensions, it might have made a vast difference in her destiny--who
knows?
“We thought we would just look in as we were passing,” she said,
continuing her mother’s explanation, “and tell Mrs. Redmond the news.”
“Yes,” broke in Mrs. Redmond, with unusual animation. “There is a stir
in town, haven’t you heard?”
“That Peter Brock’s daughter is going to America after all? Of course I
know _that_,” replied Miss Dopping contemptuously.
“Not at all,” said Maria. “Far finer news than about Mary Brock. I met
Mrs. Malone driving herself into town in the donkey car; she seemed
quite excited, and her face all flushed in patches. She had just had a
telegram; her son, Mr. Holroyd, has come home from India on sick leave,
and he has not given her any time to think it over, for he arrives
to-night.”
“Delightful!” ejaculated Belle, dropping her paper, and clapping her
hands softly.
“He has not been at Bridgetstown these five years, and then only for
a few days,” remarked Mrs. Finny. “He and the Major don’t get on. Nor
stable their horses together.”
“And no wonder,” retorted Maria forcibly. “Young Holroyd is a
gentleman, and Major Malone is a gambling, greedy, selfish, old bully,
and a nice respectable example for his son, Denis, spending half his
time on race-courses, betting away every penny, and leaving his family
paupers. It’s no wonder Mrs. Malone’s hair falls out, and she looks
so heart-broken! She only keeps three servants now, and sells the
vegetables and fruit, and the buttermilk, a penny a can. To my certain
knowledge, she has had that brown bonnet this three years, and Cuckoo’s
boots are a shame and a disgrace.”
“At any rate, she has only herself to thank,” returned Mrs. Redmond,
leaning still further back in her chair, and placing two capacious
slippers on the fender, where they had a fairly prominent effect.
Seeing Miss Finny’s eyes fastened on them, she said: “Well, yes,
Maria, I am not ashamed of them! My London bootmaker declared that it
was a real pleasure to see a foot of a fine natural size! I know you
pride yourself on wearing threes, but I call your feet disjointed
deformities. However, about Mrs. Malone. Holroyd left her well off,
a pretty widow, with one little boy; she might have left well alone,
instead of marrying a good-for-nothing half-pay major.”
“But you know, dear, he had a splendid property then,” protested Mrs.
Finny, in a piteous tone.
“He has no splendid property now,” said Maria sharply; “there will not
be an acre for Denis, and serve him right; an idle young scamp, it’s my
belief he will never pass for the medical.”
“He is the apple of his mother’s eye,” drawled Mrs. Redmond. “She
slaves for him, and screws for him, and keeps all his scrapes from the
Major.”
“And the Major’s scrapes from her son George,” supplemented Maria,
with a disagreeable giggle.
“Yes, the Major is a sore trial to all that are about him,” resumed
Mrs. Redmond. “No one is to spend but himself. He must have good
dinners and cigars and wine----”
“Whisky, you mean,” interrupted Maria with a snort.
“Well, whisky,” impatiently, “and a high dogcart, and curly-brimmed
hats and patent-leather boots, but everyone else may live on potatoes
and salt, and slave for him like niggers, or he roars like a mad tiger,
and no one dare say a word.”
“I believe George Holroyd said a good many words to him, the last time
he was here,” replied Maria, expressively.
“Yes, and he took it out of George Holroyd’s mother, as soon as his
back was turned,” whined Mrs. Finny--who always spoke as if she was
on the verge of tears--“and he has spent every penny of her fortune. I
can’t think how they live at all; the poor things!”
“Oh, Mr. Holroyd helps them,” explained Mrs. Redmond. “Jane Bolland,
at the Post Office, has often seen his cheques; he has a good private
income, besides his pay.”
“Miss Dopping,” said Belle, suddenly addressing the old lady, who sat
in grim, observant silence, with her purple gloves, exactly crossed
on the Death’s-head handle of her umbrella; “you are the oldest
inhabitant, and know everything; do tell us all about Mr. Holroyd.”
“Stuff and nonsense, Isabella! you are taking me for Jane Bolland. Go
to her; _she_ will tell you how many shirts he has to his back, how
many cigars he smokes, and how much he owes his tailor; only give her
time.”
“No, no, I am not thinking of Jane. I want you to tell me--I mean to
tell us--what he has a year.”
“How should _I_ know?” snarled Miss Dopping.
“A thousand?” in a coaxing tone.
“Have _you_ a thousand?” very gruffly.
“But indeed, dear, he must have something handsome,” pleaded Mrs.
Finny, “for he keeps polo ponies and racing ponies in India, and has
been very kind to his mother.”
“Now, Miss Dopping,” urged Belle boldly, “do be nice to me, do tell me
all about him. I am dying to see him.”
“I’ll be bound you are!” returned the old lady ferociously.
“How old is he?” continued her undaunted questioner.
“Not much younger than you are yourself,” was the brutal reply, “within
a year or so of thirty.”
“Oh, you dear old thing!” cried Belle, with a somewhat dangerous gleam
in her eye, but a playful wave of her paper, “you always must have your
little joke.”
Miss Dopping detested Belle’s familiarities; she would almost as soon
have had her nose pulled as be called “a dear old thing.” She was
on the verge of some savage retort, when Mrs. Finny, who was still
romantic, exclaimed pathetically: “He is so handsome in his photograph,
so dark and soldierly looking--just a darling fellow.”
“Then he does not take after his dear mamma,” sneered Maria. “She is so
pale and faded, she always reminds _me_ of a white rat.”
“She has had enough to fade her, poor soul,” said Mrs. Redmond. “She
has suffered for her folly. Now I may tell you, without vanity, that
in my day, I was a young woman of remarkable personal attractions. I
was quite a toast, and I was called the ‘Lily of Lippendale.’” (It
required a strong effort of the imagination to suppose that this bulky
old lady, with a very sallow complexion, could ever have been the Lily
of anywhere.) “I had poems written about me, and people used to wait
outside our house to see me pass, and yet, though quite a girlish
widow, I would never listen to a second suitor.”
Here Miss Finny sniffed incredulously, and her mother said: “I wonder
if Mr. Holroyd will see many changes.”
“To be sure he will,” snapped Maria; “why wouldn’t he? He will see the
Major redder and stouter, his mother whiter and thinner, Cuckoo as ugly
as one of her own young namesakes, and Denis, an idle ne’er-do-weel,
sponging on his family, and playing spoil five in the stables.”
“Don’t you find it very cold over there?” screamed Miss Dopping,
suddenly addressing a figure in a distant window.
A girl who was ripping some article of dress by the fading daylight,
looked up and glanced interrogatively at Mrs. Redmond.
“Yes, Betty, my darling, I am sure you cannot see any longer; you must
be perished; come to the fire.”
In answer to this invitation, Betty approached and stretched a pair of
thin red hands towards the blaze. She was tall and slender, and had a
low, broad forehead, delicate features, and quantities of bright brown
hair. To a superficial observer, she was merely a gaunt, pale, shabby
girl, who looked both cold and cross, and not to be named in the same
year with our pretty, sparkling Belle, who was toasting her toes so
comfortably on the fender. But when the sun lit up the golden tints of
her magnificent hair; when the wind gave her white cheeks a wild rose
tinge; when a smile illuminated her fathomless grey eyes, Betty, too,
had her admirers.
“Mr. Holroyd will be quite a catch,” remarked Mrs. Redmond, rubbing
her hands complacently, “and those Wilde girls will be sure to ask him
over, although they have not called on his mother for years. He will
show a _very_ poor spirit if he goes near them; they never ask anyone
inside their house except young men; they are always having ‘friends of
their brothers,’ as they call them, to stay at Mantrap Hall, as you
have named it, Maria; and a capital name it is.”
“I wonder if he sings?” said Belle meditatively.
“Like his mother,” exclaimed Maria, casting up her eyes to the ceiling.
“I hope _not_, poor unfortunate woman! her singing reminds me of a dog
baying at the moon. She ought to be muzzled at the piano.”
Miss Dopping looked as if she thought some one else might as well be
muzzled too!
“Mother,” continued Belle, “we really must have the piano tuned, and
must make some smart aprons and caps for Eliza. I shall write to Madame
Rosalie by to-night’s post. I have not a single decent dress, neither
have you.”
“What a stir, and what a fuss about one very ordinary young man!”
growled Miss Dopping. “After all he may be engaged to some girl in
India!”
“He may,” agreed Belle, “but, at any rate, he is not ordinary, is he,
Maria?” turning a look of tragic appeal on Miss Finny, “you have seen
him?”
“Yes, years ago; he was nothing very remarkable; he had nice eyes and a
good figure, and looked like a gentleman, which is more than we can say
for his step-brother, Denis.”
Maria’s verdict was accepted in solemn affirmative silence, and, after
a little desultory conversation on a less absorbing topic than Mr.
Holroyd, the Finnys and Miss Dopping departed into the darkness of a
chill November afternoon at the thirsty hour of five o’clock.
As they poked their way down the greasy avenue, Maria exclaimed: “What
a mean old woman! She had not the heart to offer us a cup of tea.
Mark my words, mother, Belle Redmond will do her best to catch George
Holroyd.”
“Why? What makes you say that, dearie?”
“Why? a child could tell you, and give you twenty reasons,” said Miss
Finny contemptuously. “She hates Noone, and would marry a tinker, to
get away from it. She is not as young as she was, and is desperately
afraid of being an old maid. She adores officers, and would give ten
years of her life to go to India. Mr. Holroyd is in the army; his
regiment is in India; he has private means, and is so to speak ‘made to
her hand;’ she will do all in her power to marry him. What do you say,
Miss Dopping?”
“I say that I hope the Lord will deliver him,” replied the old lady
very piously.
“Amen!” responded Maria Finny, with the fervency of a prayer.
CHAPTER III.
THE MALONES OF BRIDGETSTOWN.
“For there’s nae luck about the house.”
--W. J. MICKLE.
Between Bridgetstown and Noone lay Ballingoole, and the reasonable
visiting distance of one Irish mile. Bridgetstown was a great, staring
white house, with two low wings, that stood familiarly close to the
road, although screened from the vulgar gaze by a high hedge of
impenetrable laurels.
According to Major Malone, “the front of the house was at the back,”
by which truly Irish statement, he meant that all the principal
apartments opened south, into a delightful pleasure-ground, shaded by
fine old trees, brilliant with flowers, and bounded by the grey walls
of a celebrated garden. No one, driving up to the bleak and rather
mean entrance, would believe that the mere act of walking across a
hall could create such a total transformation of aspect. It was like
passing from winter into summer, and exchanging the shores of the
White Sea for the Mediterranean. The Bridgetstown pleasure-ground was
a notorious sun-trap, the rendezvous of half the bees in the Barony,
and the ruination of any delicate complexion. Flowers that drooped
and died elsewhere, here blazed forth in flaunting profusion; invalid
cuttings sprang to health at once, and the frail, fastidious, “Marechal
Niel” and “Cloth of Gold,” draped the garden entrance as with a yellow
mantle. Bridgetstown was a curious anomaly. The great white mansion was
out of place by the roadside, and the pretty demesne that lay to the
right of a long range of walls (enclosing grounds and stable-yards)
looked empty and houseless. A noble avenue of limes ran parallel to
the garden, and led to no place in particular, and everywhere in
general. It seemed as if the house had had a violent quarrel with the
park and avenue, and was on the point of quitting the premises. The
farms belonging to the property were also scattered over the country
in the most inconvenient directions, but Major Malone, in his high,
red-wheeled dog-cart, made a virtue of inspecting them very frequently;
his care-takers could have told another tale! When his credulous wife
supposed him to be making a martyr of himself, and superintending
ploughing, hay-making or threshing, he was generally attending some
race or coursing meeting, or framing himself in the bow window of the
Kildare Street Club.
Enough of the exterior of Bridgetstown. It is a raw November night;
a penetrating drizzle is descending; let us go inside, and join the
family at dinner.
A glance is sufficient to show that the house was built in the days
when money was no object with the Malones, and when there was no
struggling for cheap effect. The balustrades are carved oak; the doors
solid mahogany; the marble chimneypieces works of Italian art; the
furniture, plate, and china were all of the best of their kind, a
hundred years ago. True, the china is now cracked; the plate somewhat
battered; the mahogany a good deal scratched; the chintz and brocade
faded; but nevertheless there is an air of respectability, a glimmer
of the light of other days, lingering about the premises, that fails
not to impress all strangers. The dining-room is large and lofty,
papered with a dismal flock paper, the very touch of which thrills
one to the tips of one’s finger nails; the three windows are decently
draped in dark moreen curtains; a fine fire blazes up the chimney, in
front of which blinks “Boozle,” a monstrous red tom cat, the dearly
beloved _protégé_ of Major Malone--a cat with a strong individuality,
and considerable sporting rights as to rabbits and young game. Even
the attractive aroma of a hot roast sirloin, does not entice him from
the hearthrug--for he has eaten, and is filled with a prime young cock
pheasant, and prefers his comfortable and contemplative attitude beside
the fender.
The dinner table is square, and is lighted up with silver branch
candlesticks; the forks and spoons are silver, too; also the dish
covers, wine coolers, and flagons; the tumblers are real cut glass, and
the china mostly old Worcester, though here and there eked out with a
terrible blue and white Delft plate. There are no flowers to be seen,
nor any attempt at table decoration, unless six rather greasy dinner
mats come under that denomination. Mrs. Malone, who is head cook, chief
butler, upper housemaid, and valet, has no time for such details,
and in a family where the master is particular about his shirts, his
boots, and, above all, his dinner, and there is a large house to be
kept habitable, cows to milk, the door to answer, lamps, fires, and
plate to be attended to, the mistress of but three servants must put
her shoulder to the wheel. This mistress is a woman of about eight
and forty, and looks much older. She is thin and colourless, and her
faded fair hair displays a very wide parting; her blue eyes are timid
to abjectness, her mouth has a pitiful droop, and her once pretty
hands are coarse and scarred with manual labour; she wears a black
(cotton) velvet body, and a large pink topaz brooch and earrings, in
order to look smart in the eyes of her eldest son. Poor Lucy Holroyd!
you thought you had taken a fresh lease of happiness when you married
bluff, handsome, hearty Major Malone. Little did you guess that you
were offering your slender shoulders to a pitiless old man of the sea.
Major Malone is still bluff, but no longer either hearty or handsome;
his head is bald, but he endeavours to disguise the miserable truth,
by arranging an effeminately long lock round and round his bare
poll, and affixing it thereto with bandoline--or, it may be, glue.
Occasionally, in a high wind, or in a moment of intense agitation,
this lock has been known to come down, and float wildly in the breeze,
like a demented pigtail. To the Major “this lock is wondrous fair,”
and his most cherished vanity, and he has the impudence to discourse
of “bald old fogies” with contemptuous commiseration. He is dressed in
evening clothes, with much care and precision; wears a flower in his
button-hole, and a diamond in his shirt, and is altogether a superior
being to his shabby wife and daughter. As he deftly carves the sirloin
before him, we get an inkling of his true character. For whom are those
three large slices from the undercut that he so artfully sets aside, to
soak in the gravy? The remainder he apportions with an impartial hand,
and when the undercut is finished, he turns over the joint, and helps
his customers from the less toothsome portion, but he does not dream
of sharing those three appetising morsels reserved for his own most
particular palate, and it is thus with him always! Whoever goes short,
it will not be Tom Malone. Number one must have the best of everything.
Leaving him to enjoy his dinner, we pass on to his son Denis, a young
man of four and twenty, who has not thought it worth while to make
any change in his dress. Denis is undeniably plain; even his fond
mother--who shuts her eyes to so many things--cannot close them to
this fact. He has dark, wiry, unmanageable hair, deep-set grey eyes,
heavy eyebrows, heavy features, a hopeful moustache, and huge ears that
stand from his head like the handles of a jug. When we add that he has
a large powerful frame, with hands and feet to correspond, that he
slouches as he walks, and wears his hat on the back of his head, his
portrait is complete. Denis is clever and has a fair share of brains;
he is one of those birds “who can sing, and won’t sing.” Whilst others
toil along the dreary road of learning, he can skim the ground with
comparative ease. He has a taste for mathematics, a taste for surgery,
a quick eye, a steady nerve, and a profound faith in Denis Malone;
but he has a still greater taste for singing racy songs of his own
composition, for playing “spoil five” and “poker,” and brewing whisky
punch. However, in spite of his innate idleness and love of loafing
and low company, his poor infatuated mother believes that he will be
a credit to her yet. “Cuckoo,” his sister, is but fourteen; therefore
we will hope that she may improve, and will not cruelly epitomise her
features; suffice to say that she is pale, long-legged, and sandy, and
characterised by extreme unreserve, and insatiable curiosity.
Miss Malone is her mother’s right hand, a first-rate household
adjutant, but her father and brother’s pest; she acts as revising
editor to all their best stories. She knows when Denis is at Nolan’s
(the nearest public-house), instead of being, as the Major imagines,
in bed with toothache. She knows _why_ her mother hides the key of the
cellarette, and why her father never opens, but angrily tears up, all
communications in certain blue envelopes. In short, she is wise beyond
her years. Opposite to Cuckoo sits George, the new arrival, in whose
honour are the branch candlesticks, topaz ornaments, and dessert. He
is a good-looking young man, with a broad forehead, a pair of very
expressive eyes, and a carefully cultivated dark moustache, and, but
that his aquiline nose is too large for his face (or it may be that
his face is too thin for his nose) he would be remarkably handsome;
well-favoured, well-dressed, and well-bred, he makes an effective
Valentine to his brother’s Orson. In spite of his gallant efforts,
conversation languishes; queries about hunting and shooting fall
woefully flat; his relatives evince but a tepid interest in India,
and his homeward voyage; to tell the truth the Major’s great mind is
concentrated on his plate. Mrs. Malone’s thoughts are distracted by
an alarming letter which she received from the family grocer as she
came down to dinner, and Denis is wondering how his brother makes
his tie, and if he will lend him twenty pounds. Cuckoo, who has the
unintelligible desire to talk, common to her sex and years, converses
affably for all, and keeps her unhappy mother on thorns, lest she
should disclose too many domestic secrets. Having disposed of her
pudding with startling rapidity, she said, as she scraped her plate:
“Mother made this plum pudding herself; she always makes the sweets
now. Last Christmas, Eliza, the cook, was drunk; she sent the pudding
up, stuck all over with lighted matches; it looked so funny; she drank
the whisky! Once she got at father’s whisky, that he keeps----”
“There, that will do, Cuckoo,” said the Major, sharply. “Hold your
tongue; I wish there was a fly blister on it.”
By the time the decanters were placed before him, the Major’s own
tongue was loosened, and he proceeded to discuss the neighbourhood
with considerable animation. _Apropos_ of their own vicinity, he said:
“Nothing but parsons and old women about here now, George! Great
changes, you will hardly know any one in the parish. Eh! what? what?”
He usually concluded his sentence with this query, repeated as sharply
as a postman’s knock.
“There are the Finnys and Miss Dopping,” said Mrs. Malone, “and the
Wildes of Wildpark, and the Moores of Roskeen. I don’t think you know
Mrs. Redmond. She came since you were here last. She has a daughter----”
“I should rather think she _had_ a daughter,” interrupted the Major,
rapturously. “There is not a handsomer girl between this and Dublin.
Eh! what? what?”
“Girl!” echoed his wife peevishly. “I would scarcely call her a girl;
she has been in every garrison town in----”
“Come, come, that will do!” exclaimed the Major rudely. “We all know
you don’t like her. What handsome woman ever _is_ appreciated by the
old and ugly of her own sex? I only wish I was a young man for her
sake,” and he gulped down a bumper of family port.
“I’d be sorry to be hanging since she was thirty,” muttered Denis, who
generally sided with his mother.
“Mrs. Redmond is dreadful,” said Cuckoo, bravely, “she drawls out her
words as if they cost money, and she is fearfully stingy and mean, she
always comes here at meal-time on purpose.”
“Yes, she is a fine old soldier, and knows her way about,” admitted the
Major. “She never wants much for the asking, from a plough to a pie
dish, and she has a voice that would crack an egg. Eh! what?”
“She came here the other day,” continued Cuckoo, volubly; “mother was
cooking, and could not see her, but she and Belle marched in, all the
same, and said that they would wait for tea. We happened to have nice
hot soda cakes, and Mrs. Redmond calmly took off her gloves and poured
out tea, and ate three buttered cakes, and pressed them on Belle, just
as if she was in her _own_ house, and then said, ‘Cuckoo, as your
mother has a headache, she cannot eat soda cakes; you have had as many
as are good for you, and it is a pity to let them go downstairs, so I
shall carry them off.’ And she actually made me do them up in paper,
and took them home in her muff. Did you ever know such a greedy old
thing?”
“I never knew her match,” growled Denis, in his deep voice. “The
idea of making that unfortunate girl drag her about the country in a
bath-chair the way she does; she ought to be prosecuted for cruelty
to animals. Betty is worth a thousand of Belle, with her airs and her
eyes, and her humbug. Betty has no nonsense about her, and is as plucky
as the devil.”
“And who is Betty?” enquired George.
“You might remember her in old Redmond’s time,” replied the Major. “A
girl in short frocks, spending her holidays at Noone--a sort of poor
relation. Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father was
drowned, trying to save another man’s life. She is now a tall slip of
a girl, that comes into a room like a blast of wind, and runs mad over
the country, with her dogs and Cuckoo.”
“She is a beautiful, warm-hearted, young creature,” protested Mrs.
Malone, with a tinge of colour in her pale face.
“_Beautiful!_ Oh, Lord,” shouted the Major, derisively.
“And has two hundred a year of her own,” continued his wife----
“Which Mrs. Redmond saves her the trouble of spending,” supplemented
Denis in his deep voice, “and makes her go all the messages, and weed
the garden, and draw the bath-chair. She is warranted quiet in single
harness, spirited but gentle--fine action, mouth, and manners.”
“Betty does not mind,” proclaimed Cuckoo; “she is never happy unless
she is busy. George, I am sure you will like Betty.”
“At any rate, she is a pleasant contrast to Belle, who spends half her
time in bed, reading novels. And has the devil’s own temper,” remarked
Denis in his basso profundo.
“Hold your scurrilous tongue, sir,” bawled the Major. “What the deuce
do _you_ know about Miss Redmond?” Then to George, “She has a fine high
spirit, which I must say I admire in a woman”--that is, in a woman
outside of his own family--“she has been accustomed to the best society
all her life, and to a great deal of attention, and dozens of admirers.
She is very gay and lively, and finds it uncommonly slow at Noone.
Poor girl, she says every week seems a year. I tell her if she wants
to make the time fly, she has only to draw a bill at three months. Eh!
what? what? She’s a deuced pretty creature, and, begad, she and I are
uncommonly good friends.”
“She _flatters_ father, that’s why he likes her,” explained the
fearless Cuckoo, as her mother rose from table; and before the Major
had time to launch some furious and fitting retort, Cuckoo was already
giggling in the hall.
Bridgetstown was a house with long and windy passages, and Mrs. Malone
and her daughter hurried into the drawing-room, whilst the men drew
their chairs up to the dining-room fire. The Major lit a cigar, and
began to talk “shop” (as a compliment to his step-son), reviving former
memories of obsolete drill, and ancient mess anecdotes. George, on his
part, assumed a polite interest in the recent autumn meetings and the
odds on the Liverpool, and endeavoured to sympathise with the Major’s
bitter disappointment in “the Blazeaway filly,” whom he had backed
heavily at Fairyhouse races. Meanwhile Denis yawned, pulled Boozle’s
tail (thereby causing Boozle to lash it about furiously) and, when his
father was not looking, helped himself liberally to port. After the
Major had related his favourite stock story, about a staff officer,
a river and a chest of drawers, George and his brother joined their
relatives in the drawing-room, whilst the elder gentleman adjourned to
his own den, to his pipe, his sporting papers, and his betting-book.
The drawing-room was cold and cheerless, despite a fire and lamps. Mrs.
Malone rarely entered it, save to dust the ornaments, and superintend
Cuckoo’s practising. In answer to her brother George’s request, Cuckoo
seated herself before the grand piano with the utmost self-possession,
and proceeded to perform a series of the most amazing exploits on
the key-board. She thumped the instrument as though she had a spite
against it--which she had--and clawed it like a cat. Meanwhile her
two brothers stood near the fire and Mrs. Malone hemmed handkerchiefs
close to a reading lamp. Once or twice she glanced furtively at the
pair on the rug. Could they both be her sons? It seemed strange that
that tall young man with his air of distinction, that courteous,
scrupulously-dressed stranger, could be brother to Denis, with his
round shoulders, wild hair, and rude ways. Their voices were widely
different. Denis possessed a deep, uncultivated brogue and inherited
his father’s bullying delivery. George spoke with a polished English
accent. Their manners also were in strong contrast. George stood up
when she entered a room, placed a chair for her, and listened to all
she said with deferential attention. Denis contradicted her freely and
frankly, and would as soon have thought of standing on his head, as
of offering her a seat. She was his mother, and therefore of course
devoted to him. It was her business to mend his clothes and his socks;
fill his purse, and hide his scrapes; all this was _her_ duty, and
his----? Well, he offered her his cheek to kiss every morning, when he
was at home, and wrote to her regularly--if he wanted money--when he
was abroad. George resembled his father. Poignant, melancholy memories
stole into her mind, as she watched him through misty eyes--memories
long banished by heavy cares, and heavy bills, and selfish domestic
tyranny. What a different life hers might have been, had George Holroyd
lived!
Cuckoo, who had now brought her performance to a violent end, came over
to the fire, and stared expectantly at her elder brother, with a half
simpering, half impudent expression. “Thank you, Cuckoo,” he said with
a dubious smile.
“Thank you for what?” she enquired with a giggle.
“Well, since you ask me, for leaving off.”
“I hate music!” thrusting her bony shoulders out of her frock.
“So I should imagine! Mother, won’t you sing something?”
At this suggestion Denis opened his mouth in amazement, and then burst
into a loud and scornful guffaw.
“For goodness’ sake don’t ask the mater to sing; you don’t know her
voice now; it’s like a cracked fog-horn.”
George turned sharply to his brother, with an angry light in his eyes,
but Mrs. Malone interposed hastily:
“I never sing now; you forget that I am quite an old woman, my dear
George,” and she smiled up into his face a pitiful smile.
But the little attention had pleased her; she had been a renowned
singer in her day. What a pathetically sad little sentence that is to
many a woman--“In her day.” How short is that day! How fleeting--how
soon forgotten by all but herself!
“How nicely your clothes fit, George,” remarked his sister. “What a
swell you are!” stroking his coat admiringly.
George made no reply: he could not return the compliment. Cuckoo’s
shabby frock was nearly up to her knees, her shoes were white at the
toes, and her pigtail was tied with a boot lace.
“We have never sat here since Aunt Julia was over, last spring,”
continued Cuckoo, as she threw some turf on the fire.
“Oh, has _she_ paid a visit here? I did not know.”
“I should rather think she _has_ paid a visit--a visitation,” rejoined
Denis, who was lolling with his hands in his pocket and his eyes half
shut--an affectation of indolence being his best substitute for easy
self-possession. “We thought we should have had to go away ourselves to
get rid of her. We were afraid that she would be like the man who came
with his carpet bag to stay from Saturday till Monday, and remained for
twenty years.”
“She would have gone if she _could_,” retorted Cuckoo mysteriously;
glancing at her mother who was holding a parley with some one at the
door.
“What on earth do you mean? what was to prevent her?” enquired Denis;
“the road was clear.”
“I won’t tell you, for you hate Aunt Julia, but I’ll tell
George”--taking him firmly by the button-hole, and speaking in a
whisper.
George rather mistrusted his gentle sister’s artless confidences, but
there was no escape for him.
“She had no money for her journey; twice she had it sent over, and
twice mother borrowed it, so she could not get away; she was here three
months.”
“Nonsense, Cuckoo,” said her unwilling listener, drawing back; “you
should not say such things.”
“What has she been telling you?” asked Mrs. Malone, rather anxiously,
as she resumed her work.
“Only that we never sit here, mother, or have a fire in this room, or
dessert, or coffee, or wine,” continued this pleasant child. “It’s all
on account of _you_, George,” giving him a playful poke.
She was excessively proud of her handsome brother. Mrs. Malone reddened
to her liberal parting, and fidgeted uneasily on her chair, and George
said:
“Surely, mother, you are not going to make a stranger of _me_?”
“The fatted calf for the prodigal son! Eh! What? What?” said Denis,
mimicking his father, with a loud unmeaning laugh.
“Prodigal son!” screamed Cuckoo. “That’s yourself. Do you know the last
time he came home, George, he walked the whole way from Dublin; he was
nearly barefoot, and he had pawned----”
“_Cuckoo!_” exclaimed her mother authoritatively, “go and see if the
passage door is shut; now go at once.”
Cuckoo and Denis collided in the doorway, and left the room together;
and presently voices in angry recrimination, and the sound of a hearty
smack, and loud sobs, were heard in the hall; then a slamming of doors,
a roar from the Major’s study, and silence.
CHAPTER IV.
MRS. MALONE OPENS HER MOUTH.
“Let the world slide, let the world go;
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can’t pay, why I can owe.”
--HEYWOOD.
“Mother,” said George, after a truly eloquent pause, “why don’t you
send Cuckoo to school? her accent is frightful, and----”
“I know, I know,” interposed Mrs. Malone, laying down her work, with
a dismal sigh. “I am afraid she must strike you as ill-mannered and
pert; Julia thought so, too; but then she told a whole room full of
visitors that Julia was coming as soon as she had put in her new teeth;
the child is a great help to me in the house, and remarkably open and
truthful, as you may notice.”
“Yes, the very densest must admit _that_, but the naked truths she
introduces so gleefully are not always pleasant additions to a family
circle.”
“Perhaps not--perhaps she is too outspoken; she ought to go to school.
We must think it over, but in these hard times, George, I don’t know
how we are to afford the expense.”
“But I always understood that Major Malone had his land in his own
hands.”
“I am sorry to say he has, but farming is not his forte. We are always
short of money. I cannot think how it is!”
She knew but too well how it was. The ready money received for oats,
barley, and young stock, went straight into the Major’s yawning
pockets, and then mysteriously evaporated! How could she divulge
to her son that his stepfather had lost seven hundred pounds at the
Curragh, and nearly as much at Cork Park races; that his wine merchant
and tailor were raving for their money; that the servants were owed a
year’s wages; that she blushed to meet the baker’s wife, and was afraid
to enter the post office.
“How is Denis getting on, mother?” asked George, after a pause.
“I really do not know,” she replied with evident reluctance. “Dr.
Moran thinks he has abilities; he is fond of surgery, and you know,
ever since he was quite a boy, he has always killed our pigs; he says
himself that his next examination is absurdly easy.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“You see he has such high spirits, poor fellow,” continued his doting
parent, taking up arms for her darling, against something intangible in
his elder brother’s voice. “He is so young and spirited. It’s hard to
be tied down to books and loathsome disecting-rooms, when he is such a
splendid shot, and so fond of hunting and fishing. He is very sorry now
that he ever decided to be a doctor; he says he ought to have gone into
the army like you.”
“He can still be an army doctor.”
“So he can,” sighed Mrs. Malone, once more resuming her needle. “Well,
we must think it over.”
George leant his elbow on the mantel-piece, and looked at her
attentively. How different from the golden-haired angel of his
childhood! How aged and thin, and worn she had become during these last
five years!
“Mother,” he said abruptly, “you are looking ill and worried; what is
the matter? Have you any trouble on your mind?”
“Yes, George, to tell the truth I have; but I am not going to share it
with you. So don’t ask me. You have been only too generous--the best
of sons--and if I have seen but little of you of late, nor seemed a
real mother to you, I have never forgotten you day and night, and when
I heard that you were so ill, I cannot tell you what I suffered, or
describe my feelings.”
(The Major’s feelings were those of complacent anticipation; if George
died unmarried, his income of five hundred a year lapsed to his mother
for her life.)
“Are you quite sure that the sea voyage has set you up? And _tell_ me,
dear, do you wear flannel next to your skin?” gazing up into his face
with an expression of intense anxiety.
“Do I look like an invalid?” he returned with an evasive smile. “I am
as right as a trivet now. I was well before we reached Suez. Never mind
me, but tell me all about Denis,” and leaning towards her, he said:
“Your trouble is about _him_, is it not?”
“George, you must be a wizard. How could you guess? Well, you are
right; it _is_ about him. His college expenses are frightful, and his
tailor’s bill is incredible.”
“I should not have supposed that he spent much on his clothes,”
remarked his brother gravely.
“But he does, and there is a long account at his grocer’s--he
breakfasts in his rooms--for tea and sugar, and raisins, and
candles--such _quantities_ of candles, but he will study at night.”
(Miserable Mrs. Malone! for candles, read whisky, for sugar, porter,
for tea, gin). “I really dare not show them to his father,” and she put
a ragged lace handkerchief to her eyes, and wept.
“Perhaps, mother, you had better show them to _me_,” suggested George.
“No, no, you are far too liberal. You have little enough as it is,” she
sobbed. “I am past help,” casting her thoughts over all their debts,
their accumulating debts in Dublin, Ballingoole, and at the county
bank. “You might as well try to bale the sea with a tea-spoon as to
help _me_.”
“But if I may not help my own mother, whom may I help?” he urged
eagerly. “I have been living at a cheap little up country station,
where I had no way of spending rupees, and I have a good balance at
Cox’s. I can let you have a cheque for three hundred pounds at once.”
“Oh, George, I am ashamed to take it,” she whimpered, drawing him
towards her, and throwing her arms round his neck. “You make me feel
like a guilty woman; you make me feel like a thief.”
“Mother, you must never say that to _me_. Besides, you forget that I
brought you home no presents. I was too hurried to look for things in
Bombay, and I am sure you can lay out the money far more sensibly than
I should have done, in trashy curiosities.”
(This three hundred pounds was part of a sum that he had set aside for
his trip home; he had had visions of a couple of clever hunters, of
renting a small shooting-box, of a round of the London theatres, and a
trip to Paris and Nice.)
“Is it true that your Uncle Godfrey is going to make you his heir?”
she asked, as she dried her eyes and brightened up a little; “I heard
something about it from old Miss Holroyd.”
“No, he offered me a large allowance if I would cut the Service and
marry.”
“And what did you say, George? I hope you promised to think it over.”
“I thanked him, and declined. I have enough for myself. I have no idea
of marrying, and I mean to stick to the Service, as long as it will
stick to me.”
“If you ever _do_ marry, dear, I hope you will get a good wife.
Marriage is a great lottery, and there are many blanks----”
One of these blanks now walked into the room in the shape of Major
Malone, followed by a tray of light refreshments, also by Cuckoo,
red-eyed, but tranquil.
George poured out a glass of wine, and carried it to his mother,
whilst Cuckoo helped herself generously to macaroons, remarking, as
she did so: “Denis says that sherry is _poison_--eighteen shillings
a dozen--don’t you touch it; it’s only kept for visitors; we never
have supper like this when we are alone. These are lovely macaroons,”
speaking with her mouth full. “Cleary, the grocer, grumbled about
giving them; he is owed _such_ a bill, and he says----”
“Cuckoo,” roared her father, turning on her a countenance charged with
fury, “I have told you once before to-night to hold your tongue. Upon
my word, Lucy, I believe that girl is possessed of some devil. I shall
pack her off to a reformatory one of these days, I swear I shall. As
to Cleary, the grocer,” now blustering and helping himself to a stiff
tumbler of highly-coloured whisky and water, “he is uncommonly proud of
my custom, and thankful to have it. It was my father who first set him
going, and without the Malones of Bridgetstown he would be in a very
poor way.” (Thanks to the Malones of Bridgetstown, he _was_ in a very
poor way.)
The Major had a notion that tradespeople actually considered his orders
a high compliment, and fully equivalent to cash, and when he strutted
into a shop, be it tailor’s, saddler’s, or grocer’s, he selected
largely of the best. He did not comprehend self-denial, nor why _he_
should lack anything that was furnished to men of ten times his means.
Yet when creditors timidly ventured to ask for their little account,
he considered it a most impertinent liberty, as if they were begging
for _his_ money. He was not at all sensitive about debt; he owed bills
for years to his wine merchant and tailor, and had not the most remote
intention of paying them. Ready cash could be laid out so much more
pleasantly and satisfactorily. Besides, when wine has been drunk,
and coats worn threadbare, is it not a cruel hardship to have your
immediate attention requested to a very stiff account?
Cuckoo took shelter behind the chair of her elder brother, and
whispered to him, as she munched her macaroons, that “if anyone ought
to be sent to a reformatory, it was Denis; he was out now, smoking in
the harness room, with Casey, the jockey, and Mooney, the sweep.”
Soon after this refection the family retired to rest. George had the
luxury of a fire in his room, and sat before it for a long time, buried
in thought.
What a home this was! His mother a mere heart-broken household drudge;
his sister a mischievous, razor-tongued little savage; his brother--he
was beginning to fear that Denis, of whom his mother had written such
glowing accounts, was neither more nor less than an idle scapegrace;
and, as to Major Malone--he was Major Malone.
Before the mistress of the house removed her unwonted finery, she got
an envelope and pencil, and hurriedly jotted down her most pressing
debts. The butcher’s bill was £209. Would £80 stop Mrs. Maccabe’s
mouth? The baker was owed £75, and one of Denis’ most dangerous
creditors was clamouring for a hundred “on the nail.” There would be
no margin for Cuckoo’s new outfit, nor for the sealskin jacket for
herself, at which George had hinted. This three hundred would be a mere
drop in the ocean. George must write her a larger cheque. Yes! poor
woman, her finer feelings were blunted by distressing and disgraceful
shifts; the iron entered into her soul when she evaded Miss Bolland,
and cringed to Mrs. Maccabe--terrible Mrs. Maccabe! George was well
off; he had no ties, and but few expenses; and, in spite of all her
tears and deprecations, she was prepared to despoil her eldest born, to
shield and succour Denis.
“Lucy,” said the Major, looking through his dressing-room door, tie in
hand, “do you think that fellow would back a bill for me? Eh! what?
what?”
“No, indeed, Major, I am certain he would not,” she returned
indignantly.
“What have you got on that paper there? Eh, show.”
“Bills; debts; we owe so much money that I am ashamed to walk through
the town. Cleary, the grocer, sent up to-day, and, as to Mrs. Maccabe,
I tremble when I see her.”
“Pooh! So does everyone; you are not uncommon in that, the old
termagant! I say, is that son of yours going to put his hand in his
pocket? What’s the use of a rich fellow like that, if he won’t help his
mother. Eh! what? what?”
“He is not rich, far from it; he believes that I have my jointure of
four hundred a year; he does not know that I sold my life interest in
it years ago.”
“I hope you impressed upon him that times were bad; I will go bail you
cried; it’s about the only thing you are good at,” he concluded with a
savage sneer.
“He has promised me a cheque for three hundred pounds,” said Mrs.
Malone coldly.
“By Jove! then I will go halves!”
“No, indeed, it’s little, it’s not half enough. Do you know that we owe
Kane, the baker, seventy-five pounds, and he is a poor man too.”
“Bosh! I’m a poor man; let these cormorants wait. They _must_; debts of
honour come first, and I owe Dunne, of Jockey Hall, a hundred pounds,
which will have to be paid at once.”
“A bet?”
“Yes, a bet,” he answered, with a defiant scowl.
“Tom Malone,” she said, tearing the envelope slowly as she spoke, “do
you ever think what my life is? Do you know how often I wish I were
dead? Do you suppose, if George Holroyd had lived, that I would be the
poor, mean, unhappy wretch that I am?”
“There, don’t give me any more of that sort of stuff; you know the old
proverb. Eh! what? Never marry a widow, unless her first husband was
_hanged_. I have no doubt that if George the First was the cool-headed,
fastidious, fine gentlemen his son is, he would have been devilish sick
of you long ago. Mind one thing, I must have that hundred pounds this
week; that chap is well off, times are hard. Why, I am actually smoking
a pipe, and drinking cheap Scotch whisky! You are his mother, you have
a strong claim on him. So don’t be afraid of opening your mouth.” And
with this injunction, he entered his dressing-room and shut the door.
One scene more before the night closes. Let us take a peep at Belle
Redmond, as she sits over her bedroom fire, with a small looking-glass
in her hand, carefully examining first her teeth, then her eyelashes.
She has been building fine castles in the air, ever since Juggy, at
the lodge, announced that “a strange gentleman, in a grey ulster, had
passed on a hack car, about six o’clock.”
“He won’t come and call to-morrow,” said Belle to herself. “No, but
after to-morrow we must always have a good fire in the drawing-room,
and I shall wear my brown dress, and see that Eliza is ready to answer
the door. Betty must make a cake. Oh, dear, I hope he will be better
than that oaf, Denis! And have some life and go in him, for I shall
do my best to marry him, no matter how hideous he is. Another winter
here would finish me. I should certainly be found hanging from the
baluster one fine morning. How Eliza would scream! But she would not
cut me down. No! she hates me,” and she smiled at her reflection in the
mirror. “Yes,” she said, with a nod to herself, “I am as handsome and
as irresistible as ever. And to this young Holroyd, fresh from dowdy,
withered women in India, I shall seem divine.”
Then she laid aside her mirror, and, resting her chin on her hand,
gazed into the fire, with an expression of unusual contentment in
her dissatisfied dark eyes. Here is an opportunity to sketch Belle’s
portrait, as she sits thus staring meditatively into the red turf
sods. She inherits her dark eyes, her excitable disposition, and her
volcanic spirit, from her grandmother, a French Canadian; and ever
since she was a pretty and precocious--though somewhat sallow--infant,
she has absolutely ruled her mother, who never attempted to contradict
her wishes, nor to restrain her unusually fiery temper. What was
amusing petulance at three years of age, was ungovernable passion
at--well--twenty-nine. For each disastrous love affair, or social
disappointment, had served to increase the force of her most prominent
characteristic. She made no effort to control her furies before
inferiors, or in the bosom of her family, for she had an idea that,
as she was beautiful, she was absolved from being good! Fortunately
these domestic tornadoes were of short duration, and, whilst the storm
raged (and Belle raved, and stamped, and screamed) all the household
bent before it, as reeds in a strong gale. When it passed over, the
frantic madwoman of ten minutes previously, having gained her end,
was a kissing, weeping, coaxing slave. Mrs. Redmond spoke of these
visitations as “attacks on the nerves,” but the servants gave them a
totally different interpretation. Belle’s scenes were chiefly enacted
for the benefit of the home circle; but now and then there had been
disagreeable outbreaks in shops, in boarding-houses, and, above all,
at the rehearsals of private theatricals, after which, it had been the
painful office of her miserable mother to offer abject apologies, to
eat humble pie, and to fly the neighbourhood. Belle was undoubtedly out
of her element at Noone, a veritable swan upon a turnpike road. She
danced admirably, sang delightful little French songs, and acted with
such grace and _verve_ and real dramatic feeling, that spiteful people
hinted that she was a professional, whose temper had been the bane of
her engagements. But who wanted piquant chansons, or inimitable acting,
in dreary Ballingoole? They would have been respectively stigmatised
as French trash and tomfoolery; Belle pined for her former nomadic
existence, and detested her present respectable anchorage. She loved
the town and the gay haunts of fashion; loathed the country, and had a
true Frenchwoman’s abhorrence of wet fields, muddy roads, strong boots
and draggled petticoats. Although she only understood house-keeping
from a lady lodger’s point of view, to wit, hashes, cold mutton, and
poached eggs, she nevertheless eagerly seized the reins of government
on her arrival at Noone. Her restless spirit and maddening tongue
(and, they said, mean ways) soon drove the old servants wild--servants
accustomed to unlimited meat, unlimited tea, and unlimited leisure.
There was one tremendous scene of powerful domestic interest, and they
all gave warning, and departed “_en masse_.” After this catastrophe,
the keys were made over to Betty, who established a new régime--and a
great calm. Belle was unspeakably miserable; she had nothing to do;
no congenial society; nowhere to display her gay new hats. Far be it
from _her_, to run after beagles, to gather blackberries, or to visit
stupid, narrow-minded old ladies. She spent as much time from home as
possible, and, when at Noone, lay novel-reading in bed, or prowled
restlessly from room to room, from window to window, and filled in
the weary hours by combing her poodle, writing long letters, and
reorganising her wardrobe. Sometimes, in fine weather, she dressed
herself carefully, arrayed “Mossoo” in a pink ribbon, and strolled
along a road that led to an--alas!--distant garrison town, on the
meagre chance of meeting an officer who might drift thus far to shoot
or fish. If she encountered one or two in a sporting dog-cart, and if
they had stared very hard at the pretty, smartly dressed girl, and her
well-trimmed companion, Belle’s mission was accomplished; she was happy
for _that_ day.
* * * * *
The morning after George Holroyd’s arrival, Mrs. Malone had a tearful
and pathetic conversation with her son; and, as she sauntered, arm
in arm with him, round the wintry garden, she opened her mouth to
such an extent, that he was compelled to make his head-quarters at
Bridgetstown. There would be no spare cash for clever hunters, a trip
abroad, or even a little mixed shooting. Surely Belle Redmond’s star
was in the ascendant.
CHAPTER V.
FOXY JOE.
“I know a trick worth two of that.”
--HENRY IV.
“Joey, Joey, Foxy Joe, I say, hold hard.”
Thus challenged by Denis Malone, in a ringing brogue, an elderly dwarf,
who had been shuffling along a boreen, halted and looked sharply about
him. It was at the close of a dull afternoon; there was more than a
hint of frost in the air, and over the marshy lands, at either side
of the lane, a thin white mist was rising. To the left, Denis and his
step-brother, with guns on their shoulders, were struggling across a
bit of bog--towards where Joey stood awaiting them. Joey is possibly
fifty years of age, and not more than four feet in height. He has a
long body, and very short legs; nevertheless, he wears the clothes of a
full-grown man; his frieze coat almost sweeps the ground; his waistcoat
reaches half way to his boots, and his trousers are doubled back to his
knees, and there pinned; long, reddish elf locks fall over his collar,
and his little grey eyes look out somewhat vacantly from a pent-house
of bushy red brows. However, if not very bright--although Joey’s
enemies declare that he is more of a knave than a fool--at any rate he
has wit enough for his business; he is messenger and postman to the
neighbourhood, and wears a leather bag, slung over his shoulder, as an
insignia of his profession. In one hand he carries a stout blackthorn,
and in the other a plump woodcock. A minute later, George Holroyd was
within easy hail, coming over the wet tussocks with long strides;
these long strides suddenly increased to a rapid run, for a deep, wet
gripe, with treacherous sides of thick, withered grass, lay between him
and Joey. “You’ll never do it, Captain darlin’,” screamed the dwarf,
raising his stick. “It’s eighteen foot if it’s----” Before another word
left his lips, “Captain darlin’” stood in the boreen beside him.
“Oh, begorra thin, well lepped! You’re as souple as Pat Kearney’s
heifer; he can’t keep her out of the potato garden, at no price. Is
she loaded, Captain?” pointing to the gun. (N.B., the Irish peasant
believes every young officer to be a captain at the very least.)
“To be sure, she is.”
“An’ supposin’ she went off and shot me?”
“No fear of that, Joey,” remarked Denis, who had joined them. “A
mannikin like you would be as hard to hit as a jack snipe, and they are
the very devil. We saw nothing else to-day.”
“Well, well; so ye had poor sport, had ye? It’s a bad day for fowling;
what ails the red terrier, Crab?”
“I peppered him with No. 9 shot, and I want you to carry him home.”
“Is it Crab?” he returned, in a tone of peevish incredulity. “Faix,
Mr. Denis, a lighter job would answer me better! I’m sorry you did not
shoot him all out, when ye went about it! I’ve a print of his teeth in
the calf of me leg yet. Look at him now, rowling the white of his eye
on me, bad cess to him.”
“Well, then, carry my gun; that won’t bite you.”
“Be gor! I would not touch a shootin’ iron for the Pope himself--may
be she’d go off in spite of me.”
“What good are you, then?” exclaimed Denis, angrily. “Afraid of a dog;
afraid of a gun; I’ll go bail you would not be so nervous if you were
asked to carry a quart bottle of whisky.”
“Begorra, yer honour, ye have only to _thry_ me! I’ve just been over
at Mr. Blake’s. Now there’s a man for ye! He called me in, and gave me
a glass of spirits strong enough to take the paint off a hall door. Be
gor,” his little eyes glistening at the recollection, “to this minute
itself, I’m aware of a torch-light procession going down me throat.”
“And what have you got there?” continued Denis imperiously.
“Oh, a terrible fine young woodcock Mr. Blake is sending Mrs. Redmond.”
“Show it here.”
Joey tendered it proudly.
“It’s a fine, heavy bird,” said Denis, balancing it critically on the
palm of his hand. “And it’s a mortal sin to give it to an old woman
that does not know goose from grouse. Where was it shot?”
“By Bresna Wood, I’m thinking--they are in now, but it’s over early to
be shooting them yet.”
Meanwhile Denis, with the skill of a conjurer, had thrust his hand into
his lean game-bag, and dexterously substituted the noble woodcock for a
miserable jack snipe, which, as all the world knows, strongly resembles
the former in everything but size. “Well, Joey, here you are!” handing
him the snipe with imperturbable countenance.
“What!” screamed Joey, surveying it with open-mouthed horror. “What
devil’s trick are you up to now, Mr. Denis? Arrah!” snatching at it
passionately. “Give it back to me here, before you make a _wran_ of
it.” It was evident that Joey believed that Denis had wrought a spell
on the bird, and might possibly develop it so far as to reduce the
woodcock to nothing at all.
“What’s come over it?” he whimpered, turning it about in great
perplexity. “What have ye done to it, at all, at all? Ye ought to
be ashamed of yourself, so ye ought; it’s not the weight of a robin
red-breast.”
“Then give it to me again, and I’ll blow on it, and make it the size of
a cock turkey.”
“In troth, and I won’t. I know yer _too_ well. Here our roads part,”
opening a gate that led towards Noone, “and I’ll be for wishing ye good
evening, gentlemen; _gentleman_, I mane,” he muttered to himself as
he shambled off, with the jack in his hand. “Sure all the world knows
there’s only _wan_ in it.”
Denis put down Crab; leant his gun against the gate, and gave vent to a
loud ironical view halloo. “Gone away--gone away--gone away!”
An unpleasant reference to Joey’s nickname which Joey deeply resented.
He turned back for a moment and shook his stick furiously at Denis,
saying: “Never fear, me fine fellow, but I’ll have it in for ye _yet_,”
and then plodded on.
“How that chap does hate me!” remarked Denis complacently, as he
shouldered his gun. “I’d like to wring his neck. He is the spy and
informer of the whole country.”
“I say, though! that’s rather hard lines about the bird,” expostulated
his brother, who had lagged behind, to pick up Crab. “What will Mrs.
Redmond think, when she receives a surprisingly minute jack snipe, with
Mr. Blake’s compliments?”
“Oh! I’ll take down the woodcock myself this evening, and kill two
birds with one stone, for I shall see Betty--not to speak of Belle, a
belle that no one seems disposed to ring, in spite of her fine eyes,
smart frocks, and fascinating manners.”
“Talking of manners,” said his brother, “I wish Cuckoo could be sent to
school.”
“You may well say so! she’s an awful brat. The mother spoils her and
gives her her head entirely.”
“She ought to be sent to some good, strict establishment without delay.”
“She ought,” assented Denis; “many things _ought_ to be done, if the
coin were forthcoming. For instance, I ought to have been put into
the Service--a cavalry regiment for choice--an only son and heir to a
property, instead of being a pill!”
“How soon will you take your degree?”
“I don’t know. I hate the whole thing; sometimes I think I’ll enlist.”
“If I were you, I would stick to my profession, it’s a very good one,
and now you are four and twenty, Denis, it’s time you began to put your
hand to the plough.”
“I suppose the mater has been asking you to lecture me, eh?” said Denis
in a surly voice.
“No, indeed, she has not. She has the greatest faith in you, Denis. I
am only speaking off my own bat.”
“Then, in that case, please keep your bat out of my affairs. I don’t
meddle with you, do I?” he enquired savagely. “You have never done
anything for _me_ that I know of, and have no right to offer your
opinion and advice. Advice is cheap.”
“All the same, I intend to tell you that I am very sorry to see you
idling about at home, instead of making a start, and Cuckoo growing up
without any education at all,” returned his brother firmly.
“Oh, she is not as bad as you think,” said Denis in a milder key. It
would not suit him to have a row with George. “She does lessons three
times a week with Betty Redmond; she and Betty are tremendous pals--and
talk of an angel, here she comes!”
At this moment, a roomy bath-chair, containing a substantial old lady,
appeared looming down the road. At first it seemed to be rolling along
of its own accord, but, on nearer inspection, a black hat was visible
(though almost concealed by Mrs. Redmond’s bonnet, and enormous yellow
boa). A slender young girl was the motive power, and pushing behind
with might and main.
It was getting dark, and faces were not seen very distinctly, but when
Mrs. Redmond came near the two sportsmen, she imperatively called out,
“Stop,” and waved Denis towards her, with her gigantic fur muff.
“I’ve just been up to Bridgetstown, but I did not see your mother. They
_said_ she was out; however, I went in and sat down, to give Betty
a rest. Cuckoo entertained us about--Ah, I suppose _this_ is your
brother; it is so dark, Mr. Holroyd, that I am sorry I cannot see you;
but I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”
Mr. Holroyd muttered indistinctly, and removed his cap.
“I am afraid you will find it frightfully dull here, and _so_ different
to military life! I am devoted to the army, so is my daughter Belle. We
have many friends in the Service. I hope we shall see a great deal of
you; whenever you are feeling at all bored, mind you come and look us
up!”
Mr. Holroyd declared that he would be charmed to accept Mrs. Redmond’s
invitation, but that he was sure he would not be at all bored; he liked
the country, and hoped to have some hunting.
Hitherto no one had noticed the girl behind the chair. The outline of
her features was indistinguishable; nevertheless, George had compassion
on her, and said:
“Is this not rather heavy work; the roads are so muddy?”
“Not at all! Not at all!” rejoined Mrs. Redmond hastily. “It’s all
downhill going home, and exercise is capital for young people,
especially this kind of exercise, for it brings all the muscles into
play, legs and arms alike.”
“But surely it is rather a long distance for one young lady,”
expostulated George.
“You ought to have Miss Redmond posted somewhere on the road as
second horse--lay a dâk, as they call it in India,” suggested Denis
facetiously.
“Pooh! it’s only a mile from gate to gate. Belle would be only too
delighted to take her turn, but she is such a little delicate darling,
the slightest physical exertion knocks her up at once. For a strong
girl it is nothing. Why, at Folkestone, I used to keep a bath-chair
man for three hours at a stretch, and Betty has had a long rest.”
“Nevertheless, I hope you will accept me as her substitute, and permit
me to convey you home,” said George politely.
“Oh, well, really, Mr. Holroyd,” exclaimed the old lady (divided
between delight at the offer, and apprehension as to the style of
raiment in which her dear Belle might be discovered), “I would not
think of it; no, not on any account.”
“Oh! but you must. I assure you I will take no refusal, I never take
a refusal” (this was an excellent trait, thought the old lady), as he
placed his hand on the back of the chair.
“Here, Denis, you can carry my gun, and Crab will have to walk; he is
more frightened than hurt;” and before Mrs. Redmond could expostulate,
he was rolling her rapidly homewards.
“Well this _is_ kind,” she said. “What a delightful change from Betty;
she does jerk so, and can scarcely get me on at all. I’m sure it is all
knack.”
“Knack, indeed,” thought her charioteer. “By Jove! this old woman
weighs fifteen stone, and the chair as much as a cab; unfortunate girl,
how her arms must ache!”
Meanwhile the unfortunate girl, and Denis, lingered behind, and Denis
made over the woodcock, with a short sketch of its history, and roars
of laughter.
“And how do you like _him_?” enquired Betty, looking after the
bath-chair. “Is he the stuck-up beast you expected?”
“No, I cannot say that he is stuck-up, but he is rather superfine for
Bridgetstown; he wears silk socks of an evening, flies to open the door
for the mater, and calls the governor ‘Sir.’”
“You must be quite startled at such queer ways,” returned the girl,
with an irony that was completely lost on her listener. “Anything
else?” she asked blandly.
“He is shocked at Cuckoo, and no wonder, and he has been trying to
lecture _me_.”
“And no wonder,” she echoed expressively.
“Now, Betty!”
“Pray, what was the text of his lecture?”
“Hanging about at home, and you know _who_ is to blame for that,” and
he tried to look sentimental, as he peered into her face.
“Denis, don’t be ridiculous! you are like a dying duck in a
thunderstorm. I know very well who is to blame for your idleness; no
less a person than yourself: you loaf about the country with a gun or
a rod, when you ought to be earning your living, or learning to earn
your living, like another young man. I wonder you are not ashamed of
yourself, I know _I_ am ashamed for you.”
“I’ve a good mind to enlist!” he exclaimed in a tone of gloomy
resolution.
“Well, anything is better than idleness,” returned Betty cheerfully.
“I would far rather see you a steady private soldier, than a
good-for-nothing private gentleman.”
“There’s no one, not even my mother, who would dare to speak to me as
you do, Betty Redmond.”
“Your mother, poor soul! I suppose not, but as to other people, it’s
not that they don’t dare--they don’t _care_! Do you imagine that anyone
is afraid of such an insignificant helpless idler as Denis Malone?”
“Betty, you _have_ a tongue, and no one suspects it but me!” cried
Denis, angrily.
“Well, I am very glad that it is sharp enough to penetrate your
rhinoceros skin. I hope you will take what it says to heart. Now,
I must fly. They are nearly out of sight.” And with a gesture of
farewell, she ran after the bath-chair.
Mrs. Redmond talked incessantly as she was trundled along. She
discoursed of the dreariness of the country, of her military friends,
of her limited means, and of Belle, her beautiful Belle! Utterly lost
in this wilderness--a veritable pearl among swine--Belle, the ornament
of countless balls, the admired of all, the cynosure of even royal
eyes, and yet, in spite of her dull life at Noone, she was so gay, so
contented, the very light of the house!
This was satisfactory information, for when they arrived at the hall
door, the whole mansion was in outer darkness. Belle was sitting in the
study, with a small French poodle in her lap, and three fox terriers
stretched out before the fire, in various attitudes of luxurious
repose. These latter animals had been the property of the late master
of Noone, and actually enjoyed a legacy of five pounds each per
annum, for the term of their natural lives--and of course it was Mrs.
Redmond’s interest to prolong their days, though she did not care for
dogs. Their names were respectively “Brown,” “Jones,” and “Robinson,”
and they had each their distinctive characteristics.
“Brown” was stout, elderly, and self-conscious; he liked his comforts,
such as fire, a regular walk, and a good and punctual dinner. He was
a _bon vivant_ and did not eat fat or vegetables--an habitué of the
kitchen--and slept with the cook.
“Robinson” was a young and very handsome animal, who was fond of
admiration, and ladies and tea; was particular about his appearance,
and had quite a fund of small affectations; he was a general
favourite--even Mrs. Redmond was proud of “Robinson.”
“Jones” was also young and handsome--white body, black and tan head--a
mighty hunter, whose thoughts were centred on sport, and who cared not
a straw for the cook--indeed his whole heart was given to Betty. He led
a joyous, but by no means innocent, life, in the woods, and would sit
over a rabbit hole for hours, and, when he was in full chase of poor
bunny, his delighted barks made the plantations to ring. Many a time,
he would return late at night, and lay his prey at Betty’s feet, gobble
down his dinner, stretch his tired, muddy body before the fire, and
there hunt in dreams!
On this particular evening, all the dogs were at home, “laid out,” so
to speak, on the hearth-rug, whilst Belle nursed “Mossoo” and devoured
a battered novel, by the light of a cheap candle.
“Mossoo,” a pampered, shivering, discontented little beast, was
adored by his mistress--in fact, she belonged to him--not he to her!
He was washed, trimmed, be-ribboned and caressed, fed on cream and
chicken, and dainty dinners, with plenty of gravy. He had no sporting
instincts, he disliked mice, was desperately afraid of cats and of
wetting his feet, and the other dogs hated him, as boys in a family
invariably hate the pet, the coward, and the sneak. He was accomplished
too, degradingly accomplished; and as he went through his antics and
stood upon his head, “Brown,” “Jones,” and “Robinson” sat and stared at
him with grave and scornful faces, and seemed to glance at one another
as much to say: “Did you _ever_ see such a fool?”
However, as long as “Mossoo” had fresh cream and a soft pillow, and
his mistress’s applause and devotion, he was above the opinion of his
fellows.
Suddenly there was an unusual sound, a strange voice in the hall;
the dogs leapt to their feet, and tore out of the room, one yelping,
skelping whirlwind. If Belle had been a man, she would have used
strong language as she capsized “Mossoo,” laid down her book, and
strained her ears to catch a sound above that maddening din.
Yes! a man’s voice, and then her mother’s.
“Oh, you must come in, you really must! and have a glass of our
celebrated rhubarb wine” (celebrated indeed!)
Belle jumped up. She was in a shabby, old, red tea-gown; her hair
resembled a bottle brush. With great presence of mind she blew out the
candle, pushed one or two chairs into their places, flung herself into
a luxuriant seat, rather out of the fire-light, and feigned sleep.
“If mother orders the lamp,” she said to herself, “I am lost.”
But luckily her astute old mother grasped the situation, and when,
ten minutes later, George Holroyd took leave, he carried away with him
the memories of a dim room, a pair of magnificent dark eyes, a ditto
of restless, small, white hands, and a bewitching smile. It is not
certain, that he had not left a minute portion of his heart behind him.
At any rate he had promised to return the following day, and bring his
music, all his songs, and more especially his _duets_. His late arrival
at home was the subject of much graceful badinage on the part of his
brother and sister.
“Did you see Belle, and was she dressed?” enquired the latter, capering
round him.
“Of course she was dressed, you little savage.”
“I am surprised to hear it. How I wish you had caught her in her old
red dressing-gown.”
“Was the chair heavy?” enquired Denis.
“Weighs a ton; the old lady should really charter a pony or a donkey.”
“She had a fine donkey to-day and that was yourself,” returned Denis
with a grin. “Fancy tooling old Mother Redmond home! Upon my word, I
did not think you were so soft. Eh! what?”
CHAPTER VI.
DANGEROUS.
“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’
Said the spider to the fly.”
Her eldest son’s generous cheque had lifted a heavy load of care from
Mrs. Malone’s bowed shoulders. She had caulked and repaired her sinking
credit, with various gratifying sums “on account,” and although the
Major bullied her out of one hundred pounds, and Denis blarneyed away
twenty more, yet she contrived to pay the most pressing village bills
and the servants’ wages, and to purchase some much-needed garments for
Cuckoo and herself. In a new bonnet and gown, she was a comparatively
happy woman, when she carried her soldier son round to call on the
neighbourhood--on the Mahons of the Glen, the Lynches of Newton-Girly,
the Moores of Roskeen, Miss Dopping and the Finnys. Mrs. Finny--who was
as much too sweet as her daughter was the reverse--clasped her bony
hands, ecstatically, in Mrs. Malone’s face, as she welcomed her, and
brought a tinge of red into George Holroyd’s tanned cheek, by saying:
“So _good_ of you, my dear, kind friend, to bring your handsome son to
see us.”
Mrs. Malone’s handsome son needed no introduction to Noone, and was
perfectly competent to find his way there alone! He had received
several cups of tea from the fair hands of Belle--little did he suspect
the claws that were at the end of those soft, white fingers--how should
he? Belle was on her best, her very best behaviour--and he had lunched
there once, in company with Denis, on rabbit pie, bottled gooseberries,
and rhubarb wine--yet lived to tell the tale! but on no occasion had
he come across the girl who had wheeled the bath-chair. Nor, to be
perfectly frank, did he miss her.
After a long morning’s tramp over bogs and marshes, the dark November
afternoons were somewhat difficult to dispose of (a late dinner has
its draw-backs), and it was not altogether unpleasant to stroll
across to Noone, and sit over its drawing-room fire, with a brilliant
companion, who always remembered that he took no sugar, and very little
cream; sang tender love songs, and sparkling French chansons, with
considerable expression; told amusing anecdotes with much vivacity and
gesticulation, and enrolled him in a kind of delightful, confidential,
companionship.
They knew so many mutual military acquaintances, and military stations,
and both were aliens to this monotonous rural existence. Belle was
vivacious in appreciative company, related malicious tales of her
neighbours, flattered him discreetly about his singing and shooting,
and told him, with a sigh, that he reminded her so forcibly of a very
great friend of hers, who, she subsequently let fall, was as handsome
as a god!--and yet people said that Belle was not clever and that Betty
had ten times her brains. Whilst this merry young couple laughed and
talked and sang, Mrs. Redmond dozed over her knitting, or woke up with
a start, to gaze at the animated faces at the tea table, and to watch
George Holroyd furtively, with a cunning, predatory glance out of her
little yellowish eyes. Would anything come of _this_? she wondered.
She was desperately anxious about her daughter’s future. At her death
Noone reverted to another branch of the family, and her beautiful,
helpless, hot-tempered Belle would be left to face the world with a
very scanty income. Her own life, she knew, could not be prolonged.
She was in the deadly grip of a fatal malady, and if she could only
see Belle well married, she would die happy and with her mind at rest,
but Belle was “getting on,” and was, alas! still Miss Redmond. And she
bent all her energies to screwing and scraping every spare halfpenny,
in order to leave her daughter a better provision when she herself
had passed away. Now and then, she had reluctantly fitted her out for
a short campaign in England, for a tour of what proved to be barren
visits, remaining herself at Noone, to count the potatoes and sods of
turf, and to subsist on rabbits and herrings. The mere act of putting
by one sovereign after another, soon became her keenest pleasure, and
the enjoyment grew stronger the more it was indulged in, though she
always assured herself that this feverish gathering in of shillings and
pound notes had nothing to do with a love of money, but solely with
her love of Belle! Belle herself had no anxieties about her future.
She had made up her mind to marry George Holroyd and accompany him to
India--her promised land. She was a young woman of some decision where
her own interests were concerned, and possessed a considerable fund
of tenacity--in spite of which several of her admirers had detached
themselves, and escaped;--and, although she was by no means in love
with her new acquaintance, she was enamoured of his profession and his
prospects, and her restless spirit yearned for the perpetual changes
of scene insured to an officer’s wife. Visions of gay cantonments,
and still gayer hill stations, rose before her mental eye--visions in
which she saw herself living in a whirl of balls, theatricals, and
picnics, the queen of society, the best-looking, best dressed, and
most admired of her sex; with legions of generals, aide-de-camps, yea,
and commissioners, figuratively, at her feet. With each visit George
paid, these dreams assumed more real and brilliant hues. Woe, woe, be
to the hand that would dispel them, and condemn her to damp dreary
Noone, and the society of the Finnys, and Malones, for life--a life
that to Belle, with her intense vitality, and quenchless craving for
excitement, would be simply a living death!
George Holroyd was really quite amazed to find what rapid strides he
had made in intimacy with the Redmonds. We know how easily the great
leviathan may be led, when once a hook is in his nose! and how simple
it is for any idle young man to become entangled in the web of a
pretty and experienced flirt. He began to feel almost apologetic and
uncomfortable, when his mother regularly enquired at dinner “where he
had been?”
And he replied as punctually: “Over to Noone,” or, “I just looked in at
Noone,” “I had tea at Noone.”
Cuckoo’s ill-bred titter, and Denis’s wink, were not lost upon him,
much less the Major’s ponderous chaff, and constant regret that “he
was not a young man, for Belle Redmond’s sake.” Belle was a pleasant
companion for an hour or so, but George was not thinking of her as a
companion for life.
He had discovered that she was a young lady that one came to the end of
very soon. She was smart, sparkling and pretty; her animated gestures,
and the playful little stamp of her foot, were all very taking in their
way; but she was shallow, restless, and spiteful, and had a singularly
foolish laugh. True that to him she was undeniably sweet--sweet as
Turkish delight--but then, with most people, a little of that cloying
dainty goes a long way.
In his guilty heart, this miserable young man knew that he was daily
expected to tea at Noone; that he already had his own particular
chair, and tea cup, and that he had given Belle a quantity of new
songs, a belt of his regimental colours, and his photograph in two
positions; but surely, he would argue with himself, she was a sensible
girl, and too well accustomed to society and the ways of the world, to
suppose that these were more than the most ordinary attentions, and,
then, Mrs. Redmond had been very civil to _him_, and given him “carte
blanche” to come and shoot rabbits whenever he pleased. Crafty old
person! She sold the rabbits in the town for sevenpence apiece, or hung
them in the larder, and saved her butcher’s bill.
To tell the truth, she and Mrs. Maccabe, the butcher’s relict and
successor in the business, were not on very friendly terms. If the
Malones’ bills were alarmingly long, Mrs. Redmond’s were pitifully
small.
“A pound and a half of neck chops, is it, ma’am?” Mrs. Maccabe would
scream. “No, ma’am, _not_ to-day; you’ve had chops for the last three
months. I suppose ye think the shape is made of chops, but let me
inform you, ma’am, that you are under a mistake. Shape has legs and
loins, and fore-quarters; you can take one of them, or go without.”
And then Mrs. Maccabe, a powerful, formidable matron, in a large black
bonnet, would seize an ox tail, kept for the purpose, and lay about
her vigorously among the listening, sniggering street urchins, whilst
Mrs. Redmond would stalk back majestically to her bath-chair--and
subsequently send a pencilled order for a sheep’s head. Mrs. Maccabe
was an authority in the town; even her grown-up married sons quailed
before her tongue and her ox tail, and Maria Finny (herself a fearless
speaker) stood in respectful awe of the butcher’s widow.
“One day,” to quote that championess, who related the story with
virtuous complacency, “she made a holy show of Miss Finny before the
whole street.” Maria, on frugal thoughts intent, had stepped in to
remonstrate about a bit of gristle which she produced carefully wrapped
in paper. “Av course, I know that to please _some_ people bastes must
be made without skin, and sinews and bone. Weigh it, Sam!” shouted Mrs.
Maccabe to her son. “_One_ ounce. Cut Miss Maria an ounce of mate!”
“There, miss,” solemnly presenting it in paper, “I daresay it will
serve you for a dinner.”
Maria flung the packet into the middle of the street, and followed it
in a fury, whilst her opponent placed her hands upon her fat sides and
shook with wheezy laughter.
The widow had her good points, of course, or she would have had but
few customers, on whom to sharpen her terrible tongue. Indeed her
poorer patrons did not care a straw for her abuse, and paid her
honestly in her own coin, with ruthless and ready answers. She was
most charitable in secret, and many a fine chop and steak, and many
a strong bowl of broth, was given away _quite_ on the sly. She was
long-suffering to those who were really badly off, a devout Catholic,
and a liberal contributor to her own Church: besides this, her meat
was prime--unsurpassed in the whole province--and no better judge of a
beast ever stood in a fair than Bridget Maccabe. As the poor innocent
animals passed unconsciously before her, she could tell to a pound how
they would cut up! Her purchases were young, healthy, and well-fed; she
scorned to deal in tough old, milch cows, and skinny strippers, and
boasted that no second-class joint ever hung beneath the sign of “B.
Maccabe and Sons.”
During the days in which George Holroyd had developed so brisk an
acquaintance with Noone, he had never once come across Betty Redmond.
She was not kept out of his way in the upper or lower regions (as might
be suspected), in case her claims to attention should clash with those
of her cousin. Oh dear, no! Belle had no sincerer admirer. Betty was
her willing drudge: she sewed for her, brought her breakfast in bed,
and ran her errands with alacrity, Belle accepting these services with
smiling thanks, and honeyed speeches. Her cheap fascinations secured
for her a devoted attendant, and saved her a lady’s-maid.
Betty, who had known Ballingoole, and everyone in the neighbourhood,
all her life, was quite at home in comparison with Mrs. Redmond and
her daughter. She spent her holidays there, and looked forward to her
visits to Noone, as if she were going direct to an earthly paradise.
She loved the country, whether in summer or winter. She loved old
“Playboy,” the bay hunter who had taught her to ride, and now lay
buried at the end of the orchard. She was fond of the dogs, the cart
horses, the very cows.
She was also fond, in a way, of old Uncle Brian, with his goggle eyes,
red face, and loud voice, but here her love was somewhat tempered
by fear. He set her on horseback when she was seven years old, and
flogged old “Playboy,” over big fences, in order to teach her to ride
like an Irishwoman, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks,
when the chestnut filly kicked her off in the lawn, and went away with
the best half of her habit. He took her out with him when he went snipe
shooting, to make her active and hardy; nor dare she flinch, before the
deepest, blackest bog-drain, and he taught her to play backgammon and
cribbage, and swore at her roundly if she made a mistake. “To be afraid
of nothing, to speak the truth, and to pull up her stockings,” were the
injunctions which he enforced on his grand-niece. He left other matters
to her instructors at the English school.
When Betty was sixteen, her Uncle Brian died quite suddenly of
apoplexy, said to have been induced by a fit of furious passion,
and when she returned to Noone, her heart sank within her, for a new
mistress was coming, and she expected great changes. The new mistress
was an Englishwoman, with a pretty daughter, and both were total
strangers to Ballingoole and Betty.
Betty went mournfully round the place in her new black dress,
accompanied by her intimate friends, “Brown,” “Jones,” and “Robinson.”
There had been an auction of all the stock and out-door effects; the
yard was full of straw, and bits of boxes and newspapers; the stables,
byre, and coach house were empty; the house itself, how dreary and
forlorn; at every turn she missed old Uncle Brian, with his loud voice
and tapping stick, and was very miserable indeed, till Miss Dopping
came that afternoon, and carried her away to her own home, and
subsequently to visit the Moores of Roskeen.
A week or two later, Mrs. Redmond arrived, inquisitive, astute,
agreeable--prepared to tolerate Betty, and to tolerate the dogs--and to
make a little money out of both!
But Betty was a delightful surprise; a bright, clever, active girl,
full of good humour and energy, who knew the ways of the place, and
was most useful in the house, and took to Belle--and, what was more
important, Belle took to her--immediately.
Far from being set on one side, Betty was an influential personage, and
her aunt’s domestic viceroy and right hand. She had not been visible
at the tea-table, simply because she never partook of afternoon tea.
Her Uncle Brian had called it “a kitchen-maid’s custom,” and she
liked being out of doors until it was almost dark. At present she
spent all her afternoons with Miss Dopping, who had been laid up with
a bad cold ever since her visit to Noone, and Mrs. Redmond gladly
spared her niece, for two reasons; firstly, because she did not want
her; secondly, because she had her weather-eye fixed on Miss Dopping’s
money bags. The old lady was fond of Betty, was as wealthy as she was
eccentric, and had no near kin. If Betty became a rich heiress, it
would be a capital thing for Belle!
CHAPTER VII.
ONLY JONES.
“Some griefs are med’cinable.”
--CYMBELINE.
George Holroyd had fain to be content with the Ballingoole Harriers,
instead of the Ward-Union and Meath hounds; his poverty but not his
will consented to this pitiable change. However, even Harriers must be
followed on horseback, and up to the present, although the Major had
been making constant enquiries among his own immediate connections,
and many sporting friends, no suitable steed was secured. A large
number of the blind, the maimed, the halt, had been forthcoming, had
been submitted for inspection, each and all a dead bargain, each
sold as a personal favour to George, and for _no_ fault, so the Major
expressively stated upon what he was pleased to call “his sacred word
of honour.” George, who rode well, and recognised a decent horse when
he saw it, at last grew tired of this farce, and said:
“I always thought that Ireland was the country for good horses. Where
are they? I never saw such a set of old screws--that one,” pointing to
a discarded charger, “is like an old hair trunk, and has not a tooth in
his head. My bump of veneration would forbid my getting on his back.”
“If you will go to a couple of hundred guineas,” said the Major (who
loved not his step-son), “I’ll engage to get you a flyer--a chaser.”
“Thanks--but sixty is my limit, and as I am a light-weight I ought
to be able to pick up something that will carry me for a couple of
months.”
“There was that bay horse of Cooney’s--he is cheap enough! You tried
him one day with the Harriers.”
“Yes, but I don’t care about an animal that expects you to carry his
head home, after a very mild day’s sport.”
“Well, I believe I know of one, but he is a good way off, that won’t
ask you to carry _his_ head, but that takes it and mostly keeps it.
Maybe, he will please you,” said the Major huffily; “he belongs to a
tenant of me cousin’s, Mick Malone.”
While this independent animal was being looked up, George passed his
time in shooting snipe, sunning himself in Miss Redmond’s smiles, and
thinning her mother’s rabbits. One day, as he was tramping through the
wet woods, accompanied by “lodge” Pat, laden with dead bunnies, he
noticed through a glade, what looked like a black figure--the figure of
a woman. As any figure was an unusual sight in the upper plantations,
he halted, stared, and finally advanced towards her--a girl in an
old waterproof and black felt hat, with masses of loose brown hair,
kneeling on the damp moss, and occasionally laying her head on the
ground! “An escaped lunatic!” Also two very anxious fox terriers
sniffing and yelping and running circles round her.
“It’s Miss Betty,” ejaculated Pat, and the sound of his voice made her
spring to her feet, and confront them.
It was Miss Betty, the bath-chair girl; and how plain she was! Her hair
was tumbling over her shoulders; her face was deadly white; her eyes
dim and watery with crying; her nose the colour of a ripe tomato; an
unbecoming old hat; a raw November day--of a truth, Betty Redmond had
never looked worse!
“Can I be of any assistance? Is anything the matter?” enquired George
politely, as he doffed his deerstalker.
“Yes, of course there is!” she gasped out hysterically. “It’s _Jones_!
He has been in a rabbit-hole since yesterday.”
Mr. Holroyd had never been formally introduced to the dogs; they were
always out with Betty, and he was more than ever confirmed in his first
impression.
“And Aunt Emma does not care, nor feel it one bit,” she continued
passionately. “She says he will come out of himself; perhaps she will
be sorry when he is dead, and she loses his legacy.”
Strange, he thought, that even Maria Finny had never mentioned that
Miss Elizabeth Redmond was out of her mind.
“Do not excite yourself,” he said, soothingly. “It will be all right,
I am sure; just leave it in my hands, and I will see after him--if you
will only allow me to take you home first.”
Could a professional mad doctor say more? he thought, with warm
self-approval.
“Go home,” she echoed, stamping her foot. “And leave him here to
die--he that is so fond of me--that is my very shadow--that loves me
better than anything in the world. What do you think I am made of?--a
block of stone? No, never. I will stay here till he is brought out,
either dead or alive--if I stay for a week. Well, what are you waiting
for? If you want to be of some use, you might dig.”
“Sure it’s only a dog, sir,” explained Pat, as he looked up into his
employer’s sorely perplexed countenance. “It’s only Jones, and ’tis
himself is a born devil for hunting rabbits, and going to ground like
any ferret.”
“Oh, Mr. Holroyd, you offered to help; help me to dig him out,” said
the girl, seizing a spade. “I will do anything for you if you will only
save him. Pat, I will give you five shillings! he is choking in there,”
she went on distractedly. “Listen to his bark, how faint it is, fainter
than it was an hour ago. He is dying, I am sure of it.” And she burst
into fresh tears.
George Holroyd leant his gun against a tree, and promptly took hold of
a spade, and commenced operations with a will. Beauty in distress must
ever appeal to the heart of a young man; only this was not Beauty--far
from it--but Beauty’s cousin--besides, George loved dogs, and he
worked with all his zeal and strength for the sake of the sporting
little terrier, whilst Pat laboured and grubbed, and carried out earth
with hard horny hands. After twenty minutes’ incessant toil, through
moss and roots, and frost-bound earth, there was a scream of delight
from Betty, and a very dirty, frightened terrier struggled forth, and
was clasped instantly in her arms.
“Oh, you bad, bad dog,” she murmured ecstatically, as she kissed the
top of his head: “how dare you give me such a fright? What should we
have done if you had been lost, and spoiled the set? You shall be kept
in the stable for a week, on bread and water, for this.”
And she set him down to receive the boisterous congratulations of
“Brown” and “Robinson.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, now turning to Mr.
Holroyd--“nor Pat.--Pat, come up to the house this evening for your
five shillings.”
“And my reward,” enquired George. “I worked twice as hard as Pat!”
Thinking that despite her fiery nose and eyes, she had pretty white
teeth and a singularly sweet smile. “You know you said I might have
anything I asked for.”
“Oh! that was in the agonies of the moment!”
“Then you would repudiate your offer. Miss Betty, I am surprised at
you!”
“No, no, I never, as the people here say, ‘go back from my word;’ only
I have so little worth offering,” now following happy Pat, who slouched
along, laden with the gun and rabbits. “I have no possessions of the
smallest value, nothing but an old watch that goes for about three
hours, and a battered locket, that Jones has chewed.”
“Well, I will not enforce my claim now. I shall bide my time, and
remind you of your promise some day. Perhaps I had better have it down
in writing?”
“Perhaps you had,” she answered with a laugh.
“You appear to be very fond of dogs,” he remarked, as he walked beside
her.
“I am indeed. I look upon them almost as if they were my relations. I
have----” and she paused.
“You were going to say something,” he suggested politely.
“I have so few relations.”
“Mrs. and Miss Redmond.”
“Very distant connections by marriage. I have one uncle in India, whom
I have never seen; he is my only near kith or kin.”
“Perhaps what you lack in relatives, you make up in friends; some
people think _they_ are the best of the two.”
“Yes, I am very well off for friends--friends among my school-fellows,
and friends over here--there are the Moores of Roskeen, and the Mahon
girls, and Miss Dopping, and your sister, Cuckoo.”
“Miss Dopping and Cuckoo! What a contrast; rather a scratch pair, as
the Major would say.”
“May be so, but they suit me exactly. Miss Dopping is my house friend,
and Cuckoo is my companion out of doors.”
“And have you summer and winter friends, and fine weather and wet
weather friends?”
“No, I have _no_ fine weather friend; you don’t understand. Miss
Dopping is old and does not go out much. She and I like the same people
in books, and we read and talk over things, and she tells me about old
times, and teaches me various matters, and lectures me now and then.”
“Yes, and Cuckoo? Does she lecture you and talk about old times?”
“No, indeed, _I_ lecture her; we run after the Harriers together, and
botanise, and go nutting, and black-berrying.”
George began to think that a walk with this original girl was an
agreeable novelty, and was rather sorry to see the garden walls of
Noone looming through the trees. In a narrow path leading from the
garden gate, they nearly fell over Lodge Juggy, with her apron very
full of something, and if she could be said to blush--she blushed, as
she stood right in their way, dropping hurried courtesies.
“Oh, Juggy,” exclaimed Betty, “where are you going; what have you got
there?”
“Just a lock of old cabbage laves for the pig, miss, that Mike was
throwing out.”
“What small cabbages--they are the shape of potatoes,” said Betty,
looking steadily at Juggy’s apron.
“Well, there is a couple or so, and I won’t deny it, miss, but sure,
times is hard, terribly hard, Miss Betty, and _you_ mind the days when
your uncle was alive, when I went to mass on me own ass’s car, and kept
a couple of pigs!”
“And what has happened to you, Juggy?” enquired George, sympathetically.
“Well, sir, ever since I offended the Lord and Mrs. Redmond, I’m in a
poor way. Sure, I get nothing out of the gate, but what people give me.”
“And I hope they are liberal,” said George, feeling his pocket.
“There does be no quality passing now; times is changed, but some are
not too bad at Christmas. Mrs. Mahon puts a flannel petticoat on me,
and Mrs. Maccabe puts a couple of shifts on me, and Miss Dopping puts a
pair of boots on me.”
“The Graces attiring Venus,” muttered the young man to Betty; then
louder:
“I hope you will allow me to contribute to your toilet,” placing five
shillings in her ready hand. “Get yourself one or two larger and
stronger aprons; you don’t know _how_ useful you may find them.”
“The Lord love your handsome face!” exclaimed Juggy, upon whom the
sarcasm was completely lost. “Faix! it’s a real trate to see a
gentleman,” and, as they passed on, she struck an easy and reflective
attitude, and remarked, in a tone of audible approval:
“Och! and wouldn’t they make a lovely pair! And wouldn’t I go ten miles
on me hands and knees to see their wedding?”
George could not restrain a smile, at the preposterous idea of coupling
_him_ with his present companion.
“What does she mean about offending Mrs. Redmond and the Lord?” he
enquired precipitately--trusting that Juggy’s compliments had not
reached Betty’s ears.
“Oh! it’s a long story. She has lived at the lodge for years, and some
of her people are not quite respectable. One of her brothers is a
poacher, and another keeps a still. She used to sell his potheen on the
sly, and I often wondered _why_ she had so many visitors, especially
on Sundays, in Uncle Brian’s time, for he was an indulgent master, and
seemed to think what he called ‘Juggy’s receptions’ a great joke, but
last year she quarrelled with Foxy Joe--you know Foxy Joe?”
“Yes, I am acquainted with him.”
“Well, I believe they had some dispute about money, or whisky, and
he informed on her, and told Aunt Emma that she kept a very thriving
unlicensed ‘public’ at the lodge gate, and so, one day, when Juggy
declared that she was dying of rheumatism and cold, and had sent up to
her house for port wine and a little jam, Aunt Emma marched down to the
lodge, about twelve o’clock at night, and made _me_ go with her. We
peeped in at one of the front windows, and saw the whole kitchen lit
up. One of the best drawing-room lamps was on the dresser, four silver
candlesticks had also been borrowed, as well as glasses, and the family
punch-bowl, and Mrs. Redmond’s pet claret jug. About fifty people
were sitting round, drinking and smoking, and shouting ‘more power.’
There was a fiddler on the table, and Juggy herself and the Mahons’
groom were dancing a frantic jig in the middle of the floor. When Mrs.
Redmond flung the door back and stalked in, perhaps you can imagine the
scene, for it is beyond my power of description.”
“I think I can picture it,” said George with a hearty laugh. “Tell me,
Miss Betty, how is it that I never see you at Noone? And do you know
that I am over almost every afternoon?”
“Oh, yes, I am aware of that, but I have had other engagements. Have
you been thinking that I am a sort of Cinderella, hidden in the kitchen
among the ashes?” she enquired mischievously.
“No,” he stammered; but the idea had occurred to him.
“I don’t drink five o’clock tea, and I generally go over and sit with
Miss Dopping, who has been ill; besides, I know that Belle is a host in
herself.”
(She said this in the frank innocence of her heart, and without the
faintest _arrière pensée_.)
“The more the merrier,” returned George, “we shall have your society
this evening at any rate.”
“No, I think not. I have a message to take for Mrs. Redmond. You see,
Jones has wasted nearly all my day,” and she came to a full stop where
the pathway led to the avenue.
“Good-bye, then,” he said, “since you must go, and remember your
promise.”
“Yes, I’ll remember my promise,” she answered gaily. “I am very, very
much obliged to you,” and she held out her hand.
He took it in his. What a cold, slender, little hand! It gave him a
grateful, cordial shake, like a hearty schoolboy, and in another second
its proprietor had disappeared in the deepening dusk.
And so that was Betty! who came into a room like a blast of wind,
according to Major Malone, and whom his mother had called “a beautiful,
warm-hearted, young creature.” Well, on the whole, he rather liked her.
CHAPTER VIII.
MISS DOPPING TO THE RESCUE.
“A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse.”
“Miss Dopping’s cold had taken a terrible strong hold of her,”
according to the maid who issued bulletins at her hall door, and she
sat cowering over the fire in what she called her “museum,” wrapped in
a woollen shawl, munching liquorice ball, and reminding herself that
she was seventy-five years of age, and could not expect to live for
ever!
Each afternoon Betty had appeared, escorted by her dogs, all brisk and
cheerful, and, whilst Brown ate biscuits, and Jones conscientiously
drew the room for mice, Betty read aloud, wound worsted, answered
letters, and amused her; but to-day, thanks to Jones’s misadventure,
there was no Betty, and the old lady was feeling unusually low and
forlorn. Her drawing-room (or museum) was a strange apartment for
an elderly spinster. If you were told that it was the sanctum of
a sporting squire, you would not have been surprised, for it was
essentially a man’s room, from the tanned skins of defunct hunters
spread about the floor, the walls covered with brushes, horse shoes,
and sporting prints (prints setting forth slender-waisted riders,
charging impossible rails on short-tailed thoroughbreds, or spanking
coaches-and-four, or flat races) to the venerable old fox-hound, dozing
on the rug.
Miss Sally Dopping came of a very horsey family, and had ruled her
father’s sporting establishment for many years; but he had been cut
off by a coaching accident, and her only brother had broken his neck
in a steeplechase. The Doppings generally met their deaths by flood or
field; a natural death in a four-poster would be an unnatural death
to them. Miss Sally herself had followed the hounds with reckless
persistence, in a black skirt and scarlet jacket; delighting the male
sex, and horrifying their wives and daughters, for a fox-hunting
lady was not a common or popular spectacle fifty years ago; but Miss
Sally did not care a button for the local Mrs. Grundy. She swallowed
a bowl of strong broth at eight o’clock in the morning, and set off
on her well-bred, rat-tailed hunter, to the nearest meet, and enjoyed
herself vastly. She paid ceremonious visits to her neighbours, in her
mother’s old green chariot, and was quite as stiff and snubby to them
as they were to her. Indeed, to tell the truth, they were all afraid
to say much to her _face_--and she feared no one--for Sally had the
reputation of having a high temper, and, it was whispered, had once
boxed another lady’s ears. She was an old woman now, who had out-lived
her generation and her relations, and was never known to lift her hand
to mortal, merely contenting herself with speaking her mind _quite_
plainly, and going her own way. There were no traces of “Galloping Sal”
in the wealthy old maid, beyond that she was still an excellent judge
of a horse, and had been known, under strong provocation, to rap out a
full-bodied oath. Despite her eccentricities (which were not a few--she
used a toothpick, rarely wore a cap, and had been seen sitting with
her feet on the chimneypiece), she was very popular among the county
people, and in great request at their hospitable houses, and took a far
higher social position than miserly Mrs. Redmond, or meek Mrs. Malone,
even although she lived in the _town_! People said that she and old
Brian Redmond had been lovers once, but that they had fallen out over a
horse, and that that was the reason of her strong partiality for Betty;
but some people will say anything.
“Was that Betty’s knock?” she said to herself.
No, “Bachelor” never growled at Betty’s step! It was Maria Finny in a
damp waterproof, who, noting from over her blind that Miss Dopping’s
daily visitor had failed her, ran over to see how she was getting on?
“Oh, well, I am just getting on like all of us. _You_ are getting on
yourself, Maria.”
“Yes,” she admitted, as she removed her cloak, and drew near the fire.
“But I am not getting on like Belle Redmond. I should be sorry to be a
town’s talk like her.”
“The town is always ready to talk. I’ve a mind to buy a flaxen wig
and a pair of pink tights, and give it something to gabble about in
earnest. Well, and what has Belle been doing now?”
“She has that young Holroyd there every day of his life,” returned
Maria, who, having a budget of news, was speechfully happy.
“Pooh, what rubbish; he has only been here ten days, and, may be, he
has nowhere else to go to--or perhaps you expect him to hang up his hat
in _your_ hall, Maria.”
“No, Miss Dopping, you know I do not, but he is a nice gentlemanly
young man, and, surely to goodness, you would not like to see him
ruined for life! He has been very liberal to his mother. She was down
the street paying bills a few days after he came. I saw her myself,
going into Maccabe’s and Casey’s, and she has not faced _them_ for
months.”
“Then why the deuce doesn’t she look after her son? What is the fool of
a woman about? If he marries, she has seen the last of his money, and
most likely the last of _him_.”
“And don’t you know Mrs. Malone by this time?” enquired Maria
contemptuously--“a poor helpless creature, all her mind is set on
making things pleasant for Mr. Holroyd, keeping him and the Major on
good terms, and hiding Denis and his doings from them both.”
“Will you tell me one thing, Maria Finny--_you_ know what goes on in
the town, if any one does. Since I am confined to the house, I am a
good deal at the window.”
“You always _are_,” interrupted Maria, with her usual acid frankness.
Maria neither gave nor accepted quarter. “The song--‘Only a Face at the
Window,’ was surely made about you.”
“Tell me, Maria, what is Denis doing in Maccabe’s? He is in and out
there like a dog in a fair. If it was a _public_, I could understand
it, but butchers’ meat throws me fairly off the scent.”
“Off the scent, are you? And hasn’t Mrs. Maccabe more than beef and
mutton in her shop? Hasn’t she a pretty niece?”
“Nonsense, Maria! hold your blistering, scurrilous tongue,” said the
old lady, pushing her chair back, with great violence.
“Tongue, or no tongue, I’ve an eye in my head,” returned Maria
undauntedly. “Lizzie is one of your still waters, with her sleek
hair, and downcast eyes, and ‘yes, Miss Finny,’ and ‘no, Miss
Finny’--scarcely above her breath. She is as deep as a draw-well. I saw
Denis and her walking together in the bog road last Sunday.”
“Then, by my oath, if her aunt knew it, she would just flay her alive,”
said Miss Dopping, excitedly.
“I daresay she would! But never mind Lizzie just now; trust me, there
will be enough about _her_ by and by, or I am much mistaken. Do you
know that the Major is going on with his tricks, and his betting, worse
than ever? Jane Bolland says that he sends as many as six telegrams a
day--and always about racing. There will be a fine ruction there soon,
and George Holroyd will have to support the whole family. If he marries
Belle Redmond, he will have his hands full. When she is in a passion,
she is like a madwoman; she threw a lighted candle at Katey Brady, they
say, for spoiling a petticoat, and indeed I think there must be a touch
of madness in the family. She is so restless, and fond of gay colours,
and has the eyes and laugh of a woman who would go out of her mind for
very little. I pity George Holroyd.”
“He will never marry her, Maria,” rejoined Miss Dopping emphatically.
“_She_ will marry him, and it comes to the same thing,” returned Maria,
with great determination. “They have a fire in the drawing-room every
day, and she wears her best clothes, and walks back with him through
the woods with a shawl over her head, leaning on his arm too! and is
always sending him notes by Foxy Joe. I went over there myself one day,
with a collecting card; of course _that_ was a fool’s errand! but I
wanted to see how the land lay, and indeed,” with a sniff of virtuous
scorn, “I saw enough! I wonder if Mr. Holroyd knows about that officer
in the Sky Blues!”
“Not he,” replied Miss Dopping in her sharpest key. “If he must take a
wife from Noone, why does he not take Betty?”
“Betty! that wild slip, running about the country with Cuckoo, after
every old fern, and fossil?”
“And is it not more respectable than to be running after a young man?”
enquired the other forcibly. “She is eighteen, she is well educated,
and she really _is_ a lady.”
“She is only an awkward slip of a girl; her eyes and hair are not too
bad, but _I_ call her very plain, with her thin cheeks and pasty face.”
“Plain!” echoed Miss Dopping, shrilly.
“Yes, and what else?” retorted Maria, stoutly.
“Just listen to _me_, Maria. Old Robert Lynch, who was a terrible man
for the ladies in his day, and the best of judges, saw her once, and
said that in a year or two, she will be able to give two stone and a
beating to any girl in the country. He said he would keep his eye on
her.”
“I would not doubt him, the old scamp! Bob Lynch ought to be thinking
of his sins, and of his latter end, instead of talking trash,” said
Maria, severely. “However, Betty is not out yet.”
“And when she does come out,” retorted her champion, “you’ll find there
will be a half-a-dozen young men waiting on the steps to marry her--and
so George is at Noone every day?”
“Yes, for hours,” replied Miss Finny, in a tone that was almost tragic.
“Well, I see only two chances for him--and they are either to break his
neck, or to run away from that scheming, brazen creature.”
“I know he is asked to Goole for the cock shooting, and to the Kanes’
for hunting,” continued Maria confidentially, “for Jane Bolland noticed
the postmarks and crests. It is a grand thing for a young man to come
into this part of the world, where bachelors are scarce and girls are
in dozens. Mrs. Malone showed me a whole row of notes, waiting for him
on the chimneypiece, and really, the first Sunday he was in church, the
way the girls flocked round him afterwards--by the way of speaking to
his mother--was shameless! The Rodes, the Lynches, and the Wildes, that
scarcely look at her from year’s end to year’s end.”
“Why does he not go off hunting?” enquired Miss Dopping. “He must be a
queer sort of a molly-coddle of a young man, if _that_ does not tempt
him.”
“He has no horse yet; the Major has been trying to sell him every old
screw in the country, but he is too sharp for him and so----”
“And so he goes over and idles, and risks himself at Noone; I see.
Well, he is a pleasant young fellow, and was very civil, even to an old
hag like me, so I’ll do my best for him. I will get the Moores to ask
him over, and I’ll speak a word to the Major! And now, Maria, that will
do for to-day. I am not very strong, and a little of _you_ goes a long
way. There is your cloak, there is your umbrella; good-bye, and don’t
bang the front-door.”
As soon as the same door had been shut, with a violence that shook the
plaster from the ceiling (for Maria was not pleased), Miss Dopping
hurried over to the seat she always occupied in the window, drew her
shawl over her head, and peered into the street. She frequently sat in
this nook, watching passers-by, and knocked loudly on the pane at any
she specially wished to see, usually--almost always--_men_. She vastly
preferred their society to that of her own sex, and openly gloried in
the fact. Major Malone, Dr. Doran, Sir Forbes Gould, Lord Mudrath, the
Parish Priest, were indiscriminately summoned in from time to time, to
have a talk and a glass of good wine--and came right willingly. She was
an aggressively hospitable old lady. No one was permitted to leave her
house without partaking of some refreshment, whether it was port wine
and a biscuit, a cup of tea and seed cake, or even a glass of milk!
To refuse was to offend her seriously. The very drivers who brought
her visitors on hack cars were sure of a bottle of porter. Eating and
drinking was in her opinion, an outward and visible token of inward
goodwill. Now she sits in the window, watching for the Major, and here
he comes at last, rolling out of the post office. She rapped at him
sharply with her knuckles, and soon afterwards his red face, and ample
waistcoat, presented themselves in the doorway.
“Sit down, Major,” said his hostess effusively, “sit down; come over
near the fire and tell me all the news. You are a great stranger these
times, a great stranger.”
“Upon my word, Miss Sally,” rubbing his hands briskly, “I haven’t a
word of news, good or bad. Have you?”
“What! and you only just out of the post office! Oh! come, come. Have
you heard that your step-son is making great running over at Noone? How
would you like Belle for a daughter-in-law?”
“Faith,” drawing forth and flourishing a silk handkerchief, “I admire
his taste.”
“Well, it’s more than I do,” said Miss Dopping acrimoniously; “an idle,
useless, ornamental hussey, that never gets out of bed till twelve
in the day, and that can’t do a hand’s turn beyond trimming a bonnet,
and squalling French songs--and I am not saying _anything_ about her
temper. However, he has private means and he will want them all----”
“Oh, he is not serious,” interrupted the Major, speaking hastily, and
with visible alarm. “There is nothing in it, upon my sacred word of
honour. Of course, he admires Belle, we all do; he is not a marrying
man; he has no idea of marrying.”
“But _she_ has, and he is always there, singing and tea-drinking; more
by token he has nothing else to do.”
“I’m after a horse for him, but he is so plaguey hard to please.”
“Yes, he’s not to be pleased with one of your old garrons; and let
me tell you this, Tom Malone, that if you can’t put your hand on
something better soon, it’s a lady’s hack he will be wanting.”
“I see,” nodding his head several times. “The wind of the word is
enough for Tom Malone. I’ll write to my cousin to-night. I don’t want
the poor fellow to be hooked like that,” he added, with a keen sense
of favours to come. “I’ll write----No, by Jove, as I am near the post
office, I’ll telegraph! I’ll just run over now.”
The Major’s running was of course a mere figure of speech, a sort of
hurried waddle; he lost no time and clattered downstairs, and speedily
despatched the following message to his cousin, Mike Malone:
“Rail at once your artillery mare, or Clancy’s colt. Leave price to me.
Guarantee satisfaction”; to which an answer came that same evening:
“Mare sold, am sending Clancy’s colt.”
CHAPTER IX.
CLANCY’S COLT.
“His manliness won every heart.”
--ASHLEY.
Behold a lovely morning in late November--a morning borrowed from
Spring, as bright and sunny as if it had been advanced by the
liberal month of May. True, that as yet there had been but little
frost, that the South of Ireland is proverbially mild, and the
pleasure-ground at Bridgetstown a notoriously sheltered and favoured
spot. Chrysanthemums--yellow and brown--still braved the nipping wintry
air, hollyhocks, dahlias, and pale monthly roses as yet held up their
heads; laurels and holly glistened in seasonable green, and a gorgeous
Virginia creeper flaunted along the grey garden wall.
On such a morning, George Holroyd came whistling across the
pleasure-ground in search of his mother. She was extremely fond of
flowers, and if hoarding up shilling to shilling was Mrs. Redmond’s
passion, and deepest earthly enjoyment, grubbing, transplanting,
nursing, and potting was hers. George swung back the garden gate, till
it shivered on its hinges, and beheld his mother, and a tall girl,
promenading along the central gravel walk. His mother was leaning upon
her companion’s arm, and carried an earthy trowel in one hand--they
were evidently engaged in earnest conversation. On hearing the gate
slam, they both turned towards him, and could it be possible that his
mother’s _confidante_ was Betty Redmond? For a moment he doubted her
identity, so great was the difference between smiles and tears--between
a wild rose complexion and a countenance sodden and swollen with
crying--between a dull misty afternoon, and a brilliant morning.
The sun brought out the bronze tints of Betty’s brown hair, and was
reflected in the depths of her deep grey eyes--eyes of that mystic
shade, that can be soft with joy or love, brimming with sympathy,
dancing with mirth, or dark as night with grief or jealousy. Such
eyes are wont to dazzle, and into their depths it is most dangerous
for a young man to gaze, unless he would be their slave for life.
Luckily for mankind, the power of these eyes was unknown to their
possessor; to her, they were merely a pair of useful organs, that
saw well, slept well, and wept well--to the latter George Holroyd
could bear testimony. Betty had discarded her waterproof, and wore
a well-fitting blue serge gown, a black straw sailor’s hat, in which
was jauntily stuck two bits of scarlet geranium, the very last of the
season. She was tall and slight, and as George looked, he agreed with
his mother--Betty Redmond was beautiful. Hers was a style that bore a
searching light, the open air, the bold unflattering sun. Belle looked
best in dim rose-shaded lamplight, or within the circuit of a fire,
whose blaze was reproduced in her magnificent dark orbs. Belle was a
brilliant hot-house azalea, and Betty a bit of white mountain heather.
It is true that her nose was not as neatly chiselled as her cousin’s,
and that her small white teeth were somewhat irregular; nevertheless
Betty was a pretty girl and found great favour in George Holroyd’s
eyes; but whether she was a “warm-hearted young creature” he had yet to
discover.
“This is my son, George,” explained Mrs. Malone proudly. “George, don’t
you know Betty? I mean Miss Elizabeth Redmond.”
“Yes,” replied George. “I have already had the pleasure of making her
acquaintance. I helped her to excavate a treasure in the upper wood at
Noone.”
Betty coloured to her brow, for his eyes were looking straight into
hers, with an expression that confused and vexed her--an expression of
undisguised admiration.
“I am fortunate in meeting you, Miss Betty,” he continued, “for it
strikes me, that we are like the little couple in the weather-glass
house: when I am here, you are at Noone; when I am at Noone, you are
here.”
“I come over to read with Cuckoo two mornings a week; we take it month
about--it is my turn to come to her,” returned the girl, looking at him
steadily.
If Mr. Holroyd was going to stare at her in that odd way, she would
dislike him extremely. Mr. Holroyd read her haughty young face like a
book. What a pretty mouth and chin she had--a pretty mouth that looked
as if it could speak proud things!
“I wish you would allow me to come and do lessons with you,” he
returned with a smile. “I am shockingly ignorant, my spelling is shaky,
and my geography deplorable.”
“I think it more likely we should learn from you; you have seen so much
of the world, and so many strange places and people, I am sure you
could teach us a great deal.”
“I could teach you Hindustani and the new sword exercise, and how to
load cartridges.”
“Ah! I am afraid that your instruction would be wasted on us,” she
answered, looking after Mrs. Malone, who had been hurried off to the
hotbed by Joe the gardener.
“May I ask what you are doing?” he enquired, glancing at a hammer and
some pieces of scarlet cloth she held in her hand. “Have you been
cutting up the Major’s uniform?”
“I have been nailing up the Cloth of Gold rose, which the wind has
blown down; but you see there are some trails that I could not reach,”
pointing to them as she spoke.
In another instant, George was on the ladder, receiving nails and
bits of cloth, and particular directions, gazing down into a pair
of beautiful upturned eyes. The full effect of a pair of exquisite
upturned eyes must be experienced to be appreciated! George studied
them gravely. Something told him that it was no ordinary maiden who
held the ladder; he must not flirt with this innocent inexperienced
girl. No, no; Honour stood by with her finger on her lips.
“You seem to know your way about here pretty well,” he observed,
_apropos_ of Bridgetstown, when they had conversed with frank
companionship for some time.
“Yes, I am quite at home. I have been coming here since I was a little
thing. Your mother calls me her eldest daughter.”
“Then I am your brother, of course.”
“No, no, that does not follow by any means; you are a stranger at
Ballingoole.”
“Yes, I know I am only a mere Englishman, but I hope I shall be
presented with the freedom of the town. Mrs. Finny assures me that I
am an honoured and distinguished visitor.”
“What would be the good of the freedom of the town? It is a stagnant
little place; we have no excitements; and you are a soldier--a wanderer
on the face of the earth.”
“That is true, I am a rolling stone, and don’t care much about the
moss.”
“You like the life, then?”
“Yes, I could not conceive any other; it suits me down to the ground.”
“And what will you do when you are what the Major calls ‘kicked out?’”
“I am sure I don’t know; loaf round, I suppose, until it is time to
die!”
“And how did you like Mrs. Finny?” enquired Betty with a sly smile;
“did she made you any sweet speeches?”
“She made me _blush!_ a thing I have not done for years! Butter should
be applied in small quantities, with a delicate silver knife, and not
administered by the half-pound with a trowel. However, it pleased my
mother.”
“_Only_ your mother?” with merry incredulous eyes.
“Yes, my sensitive nature, and highly-strung nerves----”
“Your what?” she interrupted, and they both burst out laughing. Mrs.
Malone heard the laugh, at the bottom of the garden--and was delighted
to think that her handsome soldier son and her favourite visitor were
getting on so well.
At this instant the garden gate again opened with a clang, and admitted
the graceful and vivacious Cuckoo.
“George!” she screamed. “Oh! there you are; what _are_ you doing up the
ladder?”
“Looking for birds’ nests, as you may see!”
“Cuckoo!” exclaimed Betty tragically, “it is not _possible_ that you
are out in your new shoes?”
“Yes, I’m in a hurry. I have something to tell George, something he
would like to hear. Only he is so rude that I think I shall keep him
waiting, marking time, as _he_ calls it.”
“I rude!” he echoed; “my good Cuckoo, you are joking.”
“Yes, you know you called me a little pig only yesterday.”
“But of course I meant a _pretty_ little pig,” he rejoined as he
carefully selected a nail, and drove it into the wall. “What are your
tidings, fairest of the fair?”
“A horse has come for you--such a beauty?”
“By Jove, you don’t say so!” jumping down as he spoke. “Everything
comes to him who waits!”
“Yes. But I heard the man that brought him telling Knox, not to go near
his heels, for he was a born devil, but that the Major wouldn’t mind
_that_, and he winked; why did he wink, George?”
“Where did he come from?” enquired her brother as eagerly as a boy of
ten. “He is not an old friend, is he?”
“He came from near Cousin Mick’s; he belongs to a man named Clancy--a
tenant of his.”
“Let us go and inspect him, instantly, Miss Redmond, that is if you
care about looking at him; but any one who is so devoted to dogs _must_
be fond of horses.”
Betty admitted the impeachment, and they hurried towards the house,
whilst Cuckoo went shrieking down the garden: “Mother! mother! come
and look at George’s new horse.”
In a very short time, the whole establishment was collected on the
lawn, surveying the recent arrival, with critical eyes. The Major with
his legs very wide apart, and a toothpick in his mouth, carried on a
whispered conversation with a pale-faced little man, in extraordinary
tight trousers, now holding his head this side, and now on that, like a
crow peeping down a marrow bone.
Every male about the place, from the groom to the message boy, was
assembled in solemn conclave, for is not every Irishman born into the
world with “an eye for a horse?”
The animal under inspection came out of the ordeal nobly. He proved to
be young, well-bred, and sound; a fine upstanding iron grey, five off,
with lots of bone below the knee, plenty of room for his bellows, and
grand quarters.
And although Sam the groom said, “his colour was against him,” and
Tom, the message boy, “suspicioned him of a splint,” and he had not
“sufficient quality” to please Joe the gardener, yet on the whole, the
verdict was in his favour, and he was pronounced to be “a shocking fine
colt.”
But his price! Well his price was surprisingly low, and was possibly
accounted for by his rolling eye, and extremely animated manners.
According to the little wizened groom who led him (by preference) “he
was an outrageous lepper, and could jump a town, was never known to
turn his head from anything, and had a cruel turn of speed.”
Being requested to canter him quietly round the lawn, and exhibit his
paces, he refused with considerable decision. He declared that he had
the lumbago so badly he could not sit in a saddle, and had not been on
a horse’s back for months.
“Let the gentleman throw a leg across the harse, and try him for
himself.”
The gentleman, who was greatly taken with the animal, was nothing loth,
and promptly advanced to mount him.
“Take him aisy, your honour,” muttered the groom, as he let down the
stirrup leathers. “Take him kindly, he is young, and ye must just
_flatter_ him a bit at the first go off.”
But the horse scornfully refused to be taken aisy or flattered. He
had been standing for some time, and was possibly cold, and certainly
impatient; he had not been ridden for weeks (for reasons known to his
groom).
Consequently when he was mounted and let go, he lashed out with his
heels in a manner that rapidly scattered his admirers, made two vicious
buck jumps, and then bolted; going immediately down the avenue, at the
rate of twenty miles an hour.
“And the gate is shut!” gasped Mrs. Malone, as she clutched Betty’s
arm, convulsively; “the gate--the iron gate.”
Betty stood still and held her breath; they all stood and gazed, in
expectation of some horrible catastrophe; for the avenue gate was over
four feet high, with strong spikes along the top bar.
“Thank God,” exclaimed Mrs. Malone, breaking a painful silence, as the
grey, who had a fall of the ground with him, sailed over it like a deer.
“At laste he can lep,” remarked Sam the groom, wiping the perspiration
off his forehead with his sleeve.
“And where is he _now_?” asked the Major in an angry voice.
“He is away up the Roskeen Road,” shouted Tom, who had swarmed up
a tree. “Faix, he nearly did it _that_ time; he was just into Mrs.
Maccabe’s cart. Hurroo! the Captain has got a pull at him, and is
taking him across country, he--he has gone slap through Dooley’s
haggard and potato garden, and begorra,--now, now he is making for the
canal.”
And with this cheering announcement, Tom climbed down, declaring that
he could see nothing more.
In less than half-an-hour George and the grey came trotting back,
intact, and apparently on the best of terms with one another, although
they were both very hot; the grey had lost two shoes, and his rider his
cap.
“He has no more mouth than a stone wall,” said George as he got off.
“But he _can’t_ fall. He took Dooley’s boundary as if it were a cart
rut. I’ve knocked the conceit out of him a bit; he was heading for the
canal, but when he found it was all the same to me, he shut off steam.”
“George, my dear boy, what a terrible horse!” cried Mrs. Malone. “I was
sure you would have been killed, when he went at the gate.”
“Yes, like the old lady I thought that ‘every moment would be my next,’
till I discovered that he could jump. He is all right, mother, he only
wants exercise, there is no fear of me. And I mean to buy him.”
“Your father was a splendid rider, George; no horse ever conquered him.
You take after him, I see.” And she looked at her handsome, eager-eyed
son with an air of melancholy pride.
“What do _you_ say to him, Miss Betty?” he enquired. “You shall ride
him if you like, some of these days, when he is better bitted, and
broken.”
“Betty is a nailer to ride. She’d back anything,” volunteered Denis in
his gruff voice.
“He is not a lady’s horse,” objected the Major, “though handling and
exercise is all he wants. Only for this gout of mine I’d buy him
myself, and have him as quiet as a sheep by the end of the week; it’s
all hands, sir, hands--and I don’t think much of _yours_. Eh! what?
what?”
The Major was sorely vexed at George’s success, and the unmistakable
admiration that his riding had evoked, from a notoriously critical
class. The Major himself was no horseman; a lamentable exhibition in
the saddle; he had a capital seat in a dog-cart, that was all.
Presently, as the cowed and subdued grey was about to be led off to
the stable, with drooping head and heaving sides, Cuckoo rushed at the
groom excitedly, and said:
“You have not told us his name. What is he called?”
“Faix! the only name I ever heard put on him was Clancy’s mad colt, but
I believe he was christened ‘Scatter Brains,’” replied the little man
with a sly smile as he led his charge away, to have a rub down and a
feed.
That evening “Scatter Brains” was purchased by George Holroyd for
seventy-five guineas, and a luckpenny to the groom, who received it,
and a glass of whisky, with an expression of intense satisfaction--not
to say relief.
“You are not from this part of the world, are you?” enquired George by
way of conversation.
“No, your honour, I was formerly a native of Cork, and I would not tell
your honour a lie.”
“And of where are you _now_ a native?”
“Well--I’ve been at Clancy’s this fifteen years. I see you can ride,
sir,” he continued confidentially. “So I’ve no shame or fear in telling
you, that that horse requires a power of humouring. I’ve never walked
straight since the last time he got shut of me. We are not sorry to
part with him; he has a desperate trick of bolting, and for nothing at
all! When you are just walking innocently along the road, he is away
with you. He has a terrible bad name, and that’s why ye got him chape;
they does be all in dread of him! But there is just wan resource, for
a man with nerve, and I’ll tell it to you. Pretend you _like_ it--I
never could--and that will cure him. When he bolts with hounds (as in
course he always does), and mostly lames a couple of dogs, stick in
the spurs, and lam into him with a _new_ ashplant, until he is fit to
drop, just give him his head, _and_ the stick: he could not fall if he
tried, and when ye feel him under you, just devouring the ground, and
greedy to be airing himself over an eighteen foot gripe and double, ye
would not grudge three hundred sovereigns; he is a chaser, that’s what
_he is_, and invaluable to a stout rider, a bold man like yourself--but
many and many’s the time I thought he would make a ghost of _me_.”
“And have you lost your nerve?”
“Between ourselves, sir,” lowering his voice, “I have; I haven’t a
pinch left. I’ve scarcely a whole bone in me skin. I was first a
riding boy, and then a jock, and then a breaker-in, and I have had
some extraordinary bad falls. Well, sir, since you _are_ so pressing,
I’ll take just another tinte of whisky, and wishing long life and good
luck to your honour, and many a good day on the grey,” and so somewhat
unsteadily departed.
CHAPTER X.
BETTY MAKES TWO CONQUESTS.
Shortly after his purchase of “Scatter Brains,” Mr. Holroyd appeared
at a popular meet of the Harriers, got up in unimpeachable boots and
breeches, but somewhat spoiling the effect, by carrying the prescribed
ashplant. He and his mount were critically scanned by the sporting
community--who sat ranged along the top of a low wall, bordering the
road, and subsequently pursued on foot.
The grey horse was unanimously approved of, “passed,” and pronounced
to be a grand one and a goer, and invidious comparisons were audibly
drawn between him and an old “Stageen,” on which another gentleman was
mounted. All at once, a shrill gossoon exclaimed, as if announcing a
most portentous discovery:
“I have it, boys! May I never ate, bite, or sup, if it isn’t Clancy’s
grey.”
“Clancy’s grey,” echoed another voice, “that he has been striving to
sell this two year and more! Oh, the poor, innocent, young English
officer!” then in a louder key to George, “Don’t be riding _too_ far
from a churchyard, yer honour!”
“Is there a doctor out the day?” enquired a third pleasantly.
“Mother av Moses! why didn’t ye bring your coffin with ye?”
So far “Clancy” (as he was called, the other name being too suggestive)
had been behaving amazingly well, merely snorting and glaring and
prancing; even as they trotted up the soft green fields to draw the
furrows, he only moved as if stepping upon hot bricks, with now and
then a sidle and a squeal. But once the hare was found, and there was
a bustle, and a rush forward at a narrow razor bank, with a big gripe
on the near side, he cocked his ears, and practically took leave of
the field, as if he had urgent private affairs, going at racing pace,
and carrying his rider over it before he had time to breathe. He soon
outpaced the furious huntsman, and the fleeting hounds, lastly the
hare, and was making with all speed for his stable at Bridgetstown. He
jumped very big, and appeared to know all about it, and as the fences
seemed sound, George sat down in his saddle, and let him have it with
the ashplant! A wilder career was seldom seen. “Clancy” tore along like
a thing possessed, flying over hedges, till they seemed to whizz past.
Once or twice, he landed on his nose, but struggled up in a second,
and was going again as hard as ever. Cuckoo, Betty, and Denis, posted
on a neighbouring hill, with an old red spy-glass, watched his headlong
course, with breathless interest.
“There he is in Hourrigan’s land, and now he is over Murphy’s
boundary,” shouted Denis slapping his leg; “that horse would win the
Liverpool if he was put in training!--why, he is making for those boggy
fields near the canal. He had better mind himself. Whew! there he goes
in plump, _that_ will cook his goose, and unless I am much mistaken, he
will lay down his knife and fork!”
George had been prepared for this emergency, and had taken his feet
out of the stirrups, and when his somewhat blown hunter skimmed a low
bank, and landed in what _looked_ like beautiful green grass, but
was really soft treacherous bog, he was off his back in an instant.
“Clancy” struggled madly, snorted and panted with fear, but the more
he struggled the deeper he sank; in a very short time he was up to his
girths. “You want a lesson, my friend,” remarked his master, calmly
lighting a cigarette. “A nice condition my boots are in! You must learn
that this unpleasant state of affairs is the natural result of running
away, and that it is my turn now.”
At length, when the grey was completely exhausted, and had subsided so
much that his situation began to be a little precarious, his owner had
compassion on him, and he and Denis, and a couple of labouring men,
with ropes, helped him out, a shameful, pitiful spectacle, a black
horse with a grey head! He appeared to feel his position very keenly,
skulking home along the edge of the roads with his tail tucked between
his legs, as if saying to the hedges, “_Hide me!_”
After this experience, “Clancy” became a comparatively reformed
character, and merely amused himself with prancing, and plunging at the
meets, and subsequently making an example of the whole field.
The Major discovered, to his intense disgust, that his stepson had got
a wonderful bargain--a prize he was resolved to secure for himself
on that young man’s departure. “Clancy” was well aware that his new
owner was a strong bold rider, who was his master; and, although he
was by no means a mount for a timid, elderly gentleman, he was a mount
for a brave young lady, and Miss Dopping’s old face lit up with keen
delight, when she saw Betty Redmond, sitting squarely on the grey, as
he clattered up the town, escorted by George on the Major’s dog-cart
mare, and Cuckoo on the blacksmith’s pony. The grey was a rare fencer
in a big country, and sailed over everything that came in his way, with
equal satisfaction to himself (for he had a craze for fencing) and his
rider; his performances with the foxhounds were noted by “The Man at
the Cross Roads” in the _Irish Times_, and the Major took extraordinary
credit to himself, as he attended the meets on wheels, and flourished
his red silk pocket-handkerchief, and pointed out his purchase to his
friends, saying in his loud hoarse voice:
“You see old Tom Malone has an eye for a horse yet.” (All the same, Tom
Malone had never been credited with this particular class of eye, at
any period!)
“Look at that grey my stepson is riding. _I_ bought him, and dirt cheap
too. He can make a holy show of every horse in the country; he is a
chaser, that’s what he is, and would fetch three hundred any day. Eh?
What? What?”
* * * * *
George, with his hunter and his gun, was now frequently absent from
Ballingoole, staying in various hospitable country houses with recent
acquaintances, with relations of brother officers, or with hunting men.
His mother was gratified; she “liked to see her bairn respected like
the lave.” The Major was gratified from other reasons, and the only
person who was dissatisfied was Belle. Was her prize to be snatched
away from her, by the hungry, scheming mothers of anxious marriageable
daughters?
Or would absence make his heart grow fonder of her--or of somebody else?
Early in February, the meet of the Runmore foxhounds happened to be a
central one, and within two miles of Ballingoole; this was always one
of the great events of the season, when all the population, gentle
and simple, turned out _en masse_. The labourers had a holiday, the
townspeople closed their shops, and every jaunting car and ass’s
cart in the parish, took the road to Drubberstown Cross. Even Belle,
who hated fox-hunting, secured a seat in the Mahons’ wagonette. The
Major was mounted in his dog-cart, George on the grey, and Denis on
an elderly, but excellent black mare belonging to the priest. Cuckoo
and Betty (who knew every yard of the country and always evinced a
most active interest in the Harriers) set out at an early hour in Mrs.
Malone’s donkey car; indeed Betty had had a narrow escape of figuring
at the meet, with the bath-chair at her heels, but Belle had not
allowed her mother to develop the idea. As long as George Holroyd was
in the country, the old lady must forego such carriage exercise. Astute
Belle had gathered that he disapproved of her turn-out, so Betty and
Cuckoo had driven off in a little village cart, behind “Mookieanna,”
a well-fed sporting donkey--all three being in the highest spirits.
The young ladies had laid their plans with much discrimination, and
resolved to relinquish the glories of the meet, and to go instead, and
take up a strong position, from whence they would be able to see the
subsequent run--if run there was. They drove straight to the Hill of
Knock, on the side of which lies a neat gorse patch, a sure warrant
for a game fox. Tying Mookieanna to the gate, they walked up through
three large bare fields to the cover side, and then discovered, to
their intense disgust, crowds of country people assembled close to it,
smoking and joking, round several large fires, awaiting the arrival of
the hounds.
“It would be hard for them to find a fox here to-day,” exclaimed Betty,
breathless and angry.
“Faix, and so it would, miss,” calmly assented Mike, Mrs. Redmond’s
handy man and gardener. “Sure, didn’t I see a brace of them break out
of it this morning, with my own two eyes, but I’m thinking, maybe
_himself_ is in it yet.”
“There is no use in staying here,” said Cuckoo scornfully. “They won’t
find here, and will go on and draw Coolambar Hill. We have plenty of
time to run across to it; it’s barely a mile-and-a-half by the short
cut. Mike, do you take home the donkey, he is tied below at the gate.”
And the two girls girded up their dresses, and fled down the hill, an
exceedingly active couple. “They ran like hares,” to quote admirers
round the cover fires--they climbed, they jumped, they struggled
through hedges, with the ease that came from youth, and health and
practice. As they were about to breast Coolambar Hill, Betty paused
suddenly with a dramatic gesture, and said:
“Hush! Cuckoo. I _hear_ them; they have found!” and sure enough, their
listening ears caught the distant whimper of hounds, now giving louder
and louder tongue.
Betty’s cheeks were scarlet with excitement, and even the pale Cuckoo
was moved.
“Here, Cuckoo, climb upon this wall,” said her friend, dragging her
forward as she spoke, and nearly pulling her arms out of their sockets;
“we shall have a splendid view.”
And on the top of the wall, they stood hand in hand, panting from their
recent run, with their eyes eagerly bent on Knock cover. Yes, here come
the hounds streaming down, half-a-dozen little white specks, then the
whole pack, then half-a-dozen horsemen, then the whole field.
“Mike was right, you see he was at home after all,” said Betty, “but
oh! he has been headed off by those sheep; he won’t come here, he will
go for Bresna Wood, six miles away, if it’s an inch.”
The hounds passed in full cry, within two fields of the girls, closely
followed by the huntsman, a steeplechase rider, and a spare-looking
whip, on a bony chestnut thoroughbred.
“Here is George,” cried Cuckoo, triumphantly; “he is coming into
this field. Does not ‘Clancy’ jump beautifully?” as the eager grey
negotiated a razor bank, between two deep though narrow ditches.
“And just look at this man--riding jealous”--as another horseman came
at the same fence at racing pace.
“Why it’s Ghosty Moore!”
The words had scarcely left her lips, when a catastrophe cut short
Ghosty’s career. His horse, already blown and over-ridden (but willing)
took off too far, failed to kick the bank, and fell back into the near
gripe, with a loud exclamation from his rider. He and his horse were
both completely lost to sight; they had disappeared as suddenly as if
the earth had swallowed them. A shrill yell from Cuckoo, piercing as a
steam whistle, caused her brother to turn his head, and he beheld her
running down the field, waving her arms like a windmill gone mad.
Of course he must stop; he pulled in the grey with considerable
difficulty, for Clancy was bent on pursuing! He would be furious if
some nonsense of Cuckoo’s cost him what looked like the run of the
season; he turned his horse, and galloped up to her.
“What the deuce is the matter?” he demanded impatiently.
“A man,” she gasped, “a man has been killed,” pointing to the ditch,
from which there was neither sound nor sign.
George was on the spot in another five seconds, and saw four shining,
kicking hoofs, turned upwards, and heard a sickening groan, as of one
in mortal agony.
Here was a nice fix! Some fellow under his horse, that horse jammed
fast in a narrow gripe ten feet deep, and no one to help him, but a
couple of girls!
The hunt had passed to the left--swept on with the inexorable
determination of foxhounds running a burning scent: already there was
not a soul to be seen, for only the hard riders had come this way--the
less keen had taken to a convenient lane. George was off the grey, and
down in the ditch, as quick as thought. If he could only get the horse
lengthways, he might manage to drag his rider from under him, but this
was impossible, single-handed. It looked a serious business, and there
was no time to be lost.
“Come down, Cuckoo, like a good girl,” he said coaxingly, “come down,
and give me a hand. There is no fear of you. I’ll take care of that.”
Cuckoo peered down with a ghastly face, and saw the struggling iron
shoes, the blood upon her brother’s gloves, and heard half-stifled
moans of anguish.
“I daren’t, George. Oh, I daren’t!” and she began to cry.
“I dare, I am not afraid,” said Betty, scrambling hastily into the
ditch beside him; “only tell me what I am to do.”
“I’ll manage the horse, if you can move the man,” returned George.
“Just put your hands under his arms, very firmly, and hold fast, and
when I give you the word, pull with all your strength--_now_.”
The experiment proved successful. Mr. Moore was luckily a very light
weight, and George Holroyd was a strong man, otherwise he would have
remained much longer at the bottom of the ditch; but as it was, after
several attempts, these two good Samaritans got him out between them,
and laid him on the grass--a truly ghastly object; his head, which had
come in contact with a stone, was bleeding profusely; his white face
was streaked with blood, and he seemed to be insensible.
George took off his coat, and folded it up into a sort of pillow for
the sufferer, then he produced his flask, and endeavoured to pour some
of its contents between his closed teeth.
“He is dead! Ghosty Moore is dead,” shrieked Cuckoo, and she ran up the
field giving vent to a series of agonising screams; she had no nerves
whatever, and the sight of blood made her sick and terrified. Yes,
even the bold and saucy Cuckoo! she was as useless as the grey, who,
with streaming reins, grazed greedily along the hedge row, sublimely
indifferent to the fate of his companion, who was struggling in the
adjacent ditch. Presently George went down and righted him, and got him
out, a limping terrified spectacle, and then he said to Betty, who had
been trying to bind up the wounded man’s head with their handkerchiefs:
“Some one must go for help at once, either you or I!”
“There are no cottages near this, and Ballingoole is four miles off.
You had better go; you will go faster,” she returned promptly.
“But I don’t know the way,” he replied.
“There is a lane at this gate, and if the gate is locked, try a corner,
there’s sure to be a gap, and then turn to the left, and keep straight
out.”
“You are certain you don’t mind being left here by yourself?” said
George, pouring some more sherry down the throat of their unconscious
patient; “you seem to have made a good job with the bandages, but I am
afraid his arm is broken, and he seems in a bad way--a very bad way.”
They looked at one another gravely.
Supposing he were to die, with no one by him but Betty?--for Cuckoo had
actually left the field, and was nowhere to be seen.
“You must take your coat,” said the girl, “and place his head in my
lap; it will answer as well, but before you go, bring me some water in
your hat.”
“Here it is,” he said, speedily returning with his dripping property.
“And I’ll fix his saddle for you to sit on, instead of this wet field.”
“No, please don’t,” she vainly remonstrated, “there is no time to lose,
you must not think of _me_.”
Nevertheless George thought a good deal about Betty, as he galloped
into Ballingoole, in search of Dr. Moran. What a brave girl she was,
remaining there alone, with, for all they knew, a dying man. She was
just the sort of girl to stand beside one at a pinch; now he came to
think of it, her face was of the heroic type. As to Cuckoo! he scarcely
dared to let his mind dwell on his shameless hysterical young relative,
whom he presently overtook proceeding homewards at a kind of shambling
run.
“Cuckoo!” he called out sternly, “I am ashamed of you.”
“I am going for help,” sobbed Cuckoo, who was what is known among the
lower orders as “roaring and crying.” “Is--is--he dead yet?”
“Go to the first cabin you come across, and borrow a door and a
blanket,” shouted her brother, and then pushed on, and was so
expeditious, that within an hour the wounded man had been removed from
the scene of his accident, and conveyed home carefully in the charge
of Dr. Moran. Augustus Moore, nick-named “Ghosty,” on account of his
white face, lint locks, and spare figure, was the eldest son of Colonel
Moore of Roskeen, a county magnate, who possessed not only lands, but
money. He had been accustomed to see Betty Redmond ever since she was a
small child, and he liked her, but something stronger than mere liking
awoke in his bosom, when he came to his senses, and found himself lying
with his head in Betty’s lap at the foot of Coolambar Hill. He was so
stunned, and bruised, and weak, that he firmly believed that he had
entered on his last hour; but Betty’s presence cheered him. She bathed
his face, moistened his dry lips, restored his confidence, and gave him
heart in one sense, whilst she took it away in another.
As he lay there, helpless, between sod and sky, with her sympathetic
voice in his ears, her sweet anxious face bent over his, he made up
his mind, that if he lived, he would like to marry Betty Redmond.
This was a curious coincidence, for George Holroyd, as he walked home
beside her, that grey wintry afternoon, four long miles through muddy
roads and lanes, with “Clancy’s” bridle over his arm, had almost come
to the same conclusion. At any rate, he told himself that she was the
prettiest, pluckiest, and nicest girl it had ever been his luck to
know. However an immediate visit to the other side of the county, drew
him away from Betty’s unexpected fascinations--and they did not meet
again for many weeks.
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES;
AND GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, W.C.
Transcriber’s Notes
Minor punctuation errors have been fixed.
Page 12: “agreeable aquaintances” changed to “agreeable acquaintances”
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