Interference

George Holroyd’s leave to England had borne but faint resemblance to the plan he had sketched out, as he steamed homewards, with his mind full of anticipations of sport, and amusement, and his pockets full of money. It is true that he had had some capital hunting (thanks to Clancy’s grey, who was now in a racing stable), but his shooting and fishing projects, his visits to race-courses, his trip on the Continent, were still so many castles in the air. He was returning all but penniless, minus new clothes, new saddlery, a new battery of guns—minus his money, and, above all, minus his heart. What had he to show for his eight months’ tour to Europe? One badly executed photograph—a cheap little silver brooch, and a withered flower, but these he valued beyond all price!

On the passage out, he was a dull enough companion, and took a very subordinate interest in smoking concerts, whist, or theatricals, and no interest whatever in various well-favoured young ladies; no, he paced the deck in solitude, revolving plans that might tend to his getting his foot upon the ladder that leads to good things and lofty positions, i.e., “the staff.” He must study the language in earnest, and pass the Higher Standard, so as to be eligible for an appointment that would give him an increase of pay, and enable him to make a home that would not be quite unworthy of Betty.

At Port Said he received a cheerful epistle from Belle; she wrote a good hand, and, like many people who are not brilliantly intellectual, an excellent letter, if her orthography was not always above suspicion. She had the knack of giving interesting items of news in a short space, but among her whole budget there was not a word about her cousin—truly the play of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. After a rough passage through the south-west monsoon, Mr. Holroyd arrived in Bombay, and set out for a four days’ railway journey up the country. Once the Ghauts are crossed, there is but little to enliven the landscape, through the low scrub jungle of the Central Provinces, through large tracts of grain, varied by a few mosques and tombs, past fortified mud villages, herds of lean cattle, and whitewashed railway stations, where the same bill of fare remains unchanged from year’s end to year’s end—tough beefsteak and fiery curry!

At last, in the dim light of early morning, George arrived at his destination, the insignificant cantonment of Mangobad. His brother officers welcomed him warmly, listened eagerly to all his news, and enquired about his new guns, and mentioned a couple of smart racing ponies that they had, so to speak, marked down for him!

“No doubt they would suit me down to the ground if I could afford them,” he answered in reply to a suggestion that he ought to wire and secure them at once. “But I can’t afford anything better than a barrack tat. It’s a fact,” looking frankly round his comrades who were assembled in the billiard-room, after mess. “I am stone broke; I have lost a lot of money. I am as poor as Job.”

Captain La Touche, a stout dapper-looking man, his special friend, paused as he was about to light a cigarette, and exclaimed:

“Now then, young Holroyd, so you would go to Monaco!”

“Not I! I never went near the place. I lost the money in an investment, in—in short, in—in family—matters.”

“Well, I am truly sorry to hear it,” said his comrade, coming over and taking a seat beside him, “but you have three nags here and a good kit, and you can scrape along with very little besides your pay, as long”—and here he eyed him sharply—“as you don’t think of getting married.”

“I suppose you know that Jones of the other battalion is going to commit matrimony,” said George, by way of changing the conversation.

“Going to be married, is he?” growled a grizzled major, “and serves him right. The Lord be praised, that’s a folly of which I have never been guilty.”

“Nor I,” added Captain La Touche, who was a bachelor, and proud of his estate.

“Don’t shout till you are out of the wood,” returned George impressively.

“Why not?—I am practically out of the wood! There is no fear of me—why I’ve actually been in action with a would-be father-in-law, and came out scatheless.”

“How—you never confessed this before?”

“Oh, it was at Southsea some time ago, when I was quite pretty and slender and active. One night I danced seven or eight times with an uncommonly nice girl: the next morning her father waited on me—a blood-thirsty looking old brigand—and demanded my intentions.”

“‘My intentions, sir,’ I said, ‘were to give your daughter a very pleasant evening’ (he enacted the part), I placed my hand on my heart, and bowing most profoundly, said, ‘And I flatter myself that I succeeded.’ I suppose there is no hope for Jones—no choking him off?”

“No,” returned another man, “I know Jones well; you might as well try to choke a pig with melted butter.”

“He won’t believe that love is the wine of life, and marriage the headache in the morning,” snarled the Major.

“Jones was always a fool,” remarked a third.

This anti-matrimonial discussion made George rather uncomfortable; he had been among these ribald scoffers himself, but that was in old days—and before he knew Betty.

Captain La Touche was senior captain in the Royal Musketeers, and George’s special chum, and during his absence he had looked after his quarters, and his stud, but now, to his intense disgust, his friend’s polo ponies, his tandem cart and harness, and racing saddles, were all advertised in the Pioneer! Only one animal was reserved, and Captain La Touche noted with considerable trepidation, that “Barkis,” though not a polo pony, had the reputation of being a capital ladies’ hack. Cosmo La Touche was a shrewd man, and could put two and two together better than most people; his friend had his pay, and no debts, and a small private income; he could easily manage to keep a couple of ponies and pay his mess bill. Why was he reading so hard with the regimental monshee? Reading in the muggy, rainy weather, grinding for the Higher Standard, late and early, whilst he himself dozed peacefully under the punka with a French novel within reach; and why was George Holroyd, who was always supposed to be wrapped up in the regiment, and nothing but the regiment, and who set his face against detachment duty, the depôt or hill classes, now so desperately eager to get an appointment anywhere, so long as it brought him in rupees.

Of course there was a lady in the case, and he boldly taxed him with his guilty secret.

To his anger and astonishment, George admitted that such was positively the fact, admitted it triumphantly.

“And are you engaged?” he demanded sternly.

“No.”

“Oh, come then, it’s not so bad after all!”

“I only wish it was so bad, as you call it.”

“Then why are you not? Won’t she have you?” enquired the other with a jeer in his eyes.

“Because I have only fifty pounds a year and my pay, as long as my mother lives, and, out in this climate, poverty and screwing is the very devil. If I can pass and get some staff appointment we shall manage all right.”

“Is she pretty? But I need not ask you; of course she is an angel,” said Captain La Touche ferociously.

“She is very pretty. She is more than pretty, she is charming.”

“And supposing some other fellow steps in, and snaps her up whilst you are stewing over your Hindustani. How will you like that?”

George’s face was a study in complacency. “I am not afraid,” he said quietly.

“You ought to have spoken, and offered yourself at any rate.”

“Of course!” rather bitterly, “with nothing to settle on her but a sword, and a tailor’s bill.”

“Well, I hope you will come out of it all right. Have you got her photograph?”

“Yes,” examining it critically, “well, it’s a nice face, but one cannot judge; she may be marked with small-pox or have weak eyes, or a bad figure.”

“She has grey eyes, and is as tall and straight as a young fir tree,” rejoined George indignantly.

“A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, eh? And what is her name?”

“Elizabeth, but they call her Betty. Elizabeth Redmond.”

“Any relation to the Collector here?”

“I don’t know, very probably.”

“And what are your plans, if I may presume to enquire?”

“To pass if I can, and get something that will add to my pay, and then to write home and ask her to come out and marry me. She understands me!”

“I am glad to hear it, for it’s more than I do,” rejoined his comrade angrily. “You must excuse me for not receiving your news with the enthusiasm it deserves, but you know, George, you always swore that you would not marry before you were a major, if then.”

“Very likely, but with all these new warrants I began to think I might never be a major; you won’t say anything about it.”

“Trust me,” he responded with a gesture of impatience; “besides, you are not engaged, and the worst may not come to the worst: there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. If you were in any other scrape I would lend you money, and for as long as you liked and insist on your taking it, but I’ll never lift a finger to help you to a wife.”

Days and weeks went by slowly enough, but Betty’s photograph now stood boldly on George’s writing-table, and spurred him to many a tough task. True, it was chaperoned by portraits of Mrs. Malone and Cuckoo, and by casual eyes she was supposed to be merely another sister, and Captain La Touche kept his secret. Parades and regimental work occupied George’s mornings, and many an evening he never went out till dark, but worked hard with his monshee, who proclaimed him to be a “wonderfully clever gentleman,” and secretly felt secure of his own premium as together they plodded through the Prem Sagar and Bagh-o-Bahar. George was obliged to forego boating, cricket and paperchasing, he took his name off the polo club, and abjured cigarettes and expensive boots, and only that in his prosperous days he had always been so open-handed, there would have been an outcry at his economy. But his friends believed he had some excellent reason for his self-denial, though no one but Captain La Touche knew how good that reason was. Captain La Touche was a man of five-and-thirty, with a considerable private fortune, and a handsome, pleasant face. His figure was his despair, he would grow stout, aye, and keep stout; despite of anti-fat, exercise, and semi-starvation, he still conspicuously filled the eye!

Now he had accepted the situation, ate and drank whatever his rather fastidious palate dictated, kept a weight-carrying charger, and one broad-backed, confidential cob, and fell into the rank of a looker-on, at pig-sticking and polo, and spoke of himself as “a superannuated butterfly!” He was not what is called “a red-hot soldier,” and never aspired to command the Royal Musketeers. He looked upon parades and orderly rooms as vexatious interludes in an otherwise agreeably spent existence, but he was very much attached to the regiment, as an excellent travelling club, and was the firm, personal friend of almost every one of his brother officers; and George Holroyd was Jonathan to this goodly, popular, and somewhat cynical, David.

He was president of the mess, organised entertainments that were invariably a success, arranged the daily menus, overawed all the waiters, and knew how to put a crusty commanding officer through a course of the most soothing dinner treatment. In fact, he was king of the mess, by universal acclamation, and to hear that he was to lose his right hand, his prime favourite, by marriage, was a blow as painful as it was unexpected. Captain La Touche had some French blood in his veins, and spoke the language like a native. His manners to ladies were unapproachable for chivalrous politeness, and yet, like Miss Dopping, he preferred to associate with the sterner sex; nevertheless he was a keen observer and took an almost effeminate interest in their dress. As to his own outward appearance, it was the result of patient study, and the mirror at which many another man fashioned himself. For a first-rate opinion on a coat, a dinner, a point of etiquette or a claret vintage, you could not go to a better person than Captain Cosmo La Touche; extremes meet; he and his chosen friend were almost diametrically opposite in mind, body and estate. One was a Sybarite, the other a sportsman; one was a philosopher, the other a man of action. One could eat anything that was set before him, the other would sooner perish!

I am afraid we cannot conceal from ourselves that Captain La Touche is a bon vivant, and is very proud of his delicate palate. Indeed, he has publicly given out that the woman who aspires to be Mrs. La Touche—be she never so beautiful—must have taken honours at the school of cookery! He gave a good many of his thoughts to George’s affairs, as he lay in a Bombay chair and smoked cigarette after cigarette, meditating sadly on his friend’s future.

This girl, this Miss Redmond, had a pretty, well-bred face, and looked as if she had no nonsense about her; she rode well (if George was to be believed) and played tennis, and was a fair musician, and would possibly be an acquisition to the station; but what a loss George would be to the mess! He was a capital rider, could tell a good story, and sing a good song, and was quite the most brilliant polo player in the province.

Now all that would be at an end! He would only care for driving his wife about in a little pony-cart, and subsequently dining tête-à-tête on a leg of mutton, and custard pudding—ugh! George would sink into domestic limbo “avec la fatalité d’une pierre qui tombe.”

Mangobad was a typical up country station, sequestered and self-contained. Besides the Royal Musketeers, there was a native infantry regiment, a chaplain, a judge, a collector, several doctors, several engineers, a few indigo planters in from the district, and now and then a great man encamped in the mango tope, with his imposing transport of camels, elephants, and carriage horses.

The cantonment was just a comfortable size for a sociable community—and luckily the community was sociable; it numbered about fifty men and fifteen ladies, but the latter fluctuated. Sometimes they numbered as many as thirty, sometimes but three.

The station was situated in the midst of a great flat grain country, diversified by fine groves or topes of forest trees, and scattered over with red-roofed villages of immemorial antiquity. Riding along the well-kept pucka roads, with ripe, yellow corn waving at either side, the cool November air and the noble timber would deceive one into believing that they were in the south of Europe, until a Commissariat elephant lumbering along, or a camel carriage and pair, or a four-in-hand of hideous water buffaloes, dragging a primitive wain laden with sugar-cane, dispelled the idea. Besides the level roads bordered with Neem, Shesum, Sirus, and Teak trees, there were smooth, green parade grounds and comfortable bungalows, standing in the midst of luxuriant gardens, where roses, passion-flowers, oranges and strawberries, mangoes and mignonette grew in sociable abundance.

There was a picturesque church and an excellent station club, where all the community assembled to read the papers, play tennis, drink tea, and hear the news; but invariably, by the middle of April, the tennis courts were deserted, the chairs round the tea-table were vacant, and the gallop of ponies was no longer heard cutting up the adjacent polo ground. All those who could command money and leave, had promptly fled away to various hill stations.

George Holroyd was not among the exodus, he remained to do duty—the little that is possible with the thermometer at 104—and to sit behind a “Khus-khus” tattie, while the hot west wind came booming through the mango trees—and fought with the drowsy, stifling hours, and the weary pages of the Bagh-o-Bahar. Captain La Touche had gone to Simla, where he was a conspicuous member of the clubs, and an esteemed customer at Peliti’s, and gave recherché little dinners at the châlet; he had done his utmost to carry his friend with him, and had used arguments, bribes, and even threats.

“You will go mad, my dear fellow, you will certainly go mad, staying down here, and grinding your brains away; you will feel the effects before another week goes over your head. Come up for a couple of months at least; come and stay with me; come, my dear boy, and see Simla. Come! I’ll mount you at polo, come!”

“Not I—thank you; if I went anywhere I would go into Cashmere. I have no taste for sticking myself over with patent leather and peacock’s feathers, and riding beside a woman’s rickshaw.”

“It would depend upon who was in the rickshaw, I suppose. Eh? Well, if you don’t mind yourself, it’s my opinion that one of these days we shall be riding after your coffin! Promise me before I go, that if you feel at all seedy you will send me a wire, and follow it at once.”

As he was very pertinacious, George gave him the required promise, solely for the sake of peace.

Early in June he went up for his examination, and, whilst he awaited the result in miserable suspense, he received a letter from his uncle Godfrey, who, through the family lawyer, had recently discovered the state of his money affairs. After upbraiding him angrily for keeping the matter from him, and for allowing himself to be stripped to his last shilling in order to support Major Malone’s family, he went on to say that he would make him an allowance of five hundred a year, in order that he might live like a gentleman, and as became his heir, and if he would only come home, and settle down, and marry some nice girl, he would do a great deal more for him.

“And if I settle down, and marry a nice girl out here, I wonder what he will say to that?” said his nephew to himself, as he tried to realise his unexpected good fortune. He did not spend much time in reflection, but galloped over to the Colonel’s bungalow, and asked that amazed officer “if there was any chance of his getting three months’ leave to England, and to start at once.”

“Not the smallest,” returned the Colonel firmly, adding a complaint that he made at least ten times a day—“I have only four subalterns. You know I am terribly short of officers—Indeed, Holroyd, I wonder that a man of your sense could be such a fool as to propose such a thing!”

The same mail that brought Mr. Godfrey Holroyd’s letter brought the news that Colonel and Mrs. Calvert were coming out in September. Colonel Calvert was the District Inspector of Police for Mangobad. What a chance for Betty! She might travel with them. He lost no time in writing, and despatching three letters by the out-going mail, one to the Calverts, and two to Noone, and anxiously awaited Betty’s telegram.

In due time the answer arrived, and by a strange coincidence, the same day’s post brought the agreeable intimation that he had passed the Higher Standard in Hindustani. Surely a lucky omen, if omens stand for aught. He gave a dinner at the mess to celebrate the event with his brother officers.

(Also another event of which they were as yet in ignorance.)

Fortune, who had turned her back on him for so long, was now apparently all smiles, and seemed to be thrusting her favours on him with both hands.

END OF VOL. II.

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