Interference

The winter waned, spring came in with showers and lambs and primroses, but brought few changes in Ballingoole. Mrs. Redmond’s health was now failing perceptibly. She rarely went forth in the bath-chair, and leant more and more on Betty.

Mrs. Malone complained incessantly of face-ache and looked proportionately wretched, and was occasionally seen stealing out of Mrs. Maccabe’s parlour, where she had been “having a read” of one of Lizzie’s letters, for Denis was a miserable correspondent. The young people were doing well, and Lizzie proudly informed her aunt that “no one out there knew her from a real lady,” but this was a mistake on Lizzie’s part, and ignorance is bliss.

The Major was more from home than formerly, and received more telegrams and more bills than of yore, was as red in the face as a Christmas turkey-cock, and was waited on by his household with an even greater amount of assiduous apologetic attention. Cuckoo and Betty scoured the country with the dogs, or sat with their heads bent over an atlas or a French dictionary, and Miss Dopping, a prisoner in the fetters of rheumatism, occupied her usual seat in the window, and watched passing events, and delivered powerful and pungent criticisms on men, women, and things. As for Belle, she read novels and drank tea, and wrote letters (George Holroyd was frequently favoured), refurbished her wardrobe against his return, and mentally—oh, happiest moments! made an extravagant catalogue of her trousseau and Indian outfit.

One evening, as Mrs. Redmond and her two companions were sitting at tea, the door burst open, and Maria Finny hurried in unannounced. She wore an old garden hat and shawl, and had evidently come in by the back way, and kitchen entrance.

“There’s terrible work at Bridgetstown,” she panted, “and I have just run over to tell you.”

“What, what has happened this time?” enquired Belle, with bright excited eyes.

“The Major is dead.”

“Dead!” echoed Mrs. Redmond. “Nonsense!”

“Yes, went off in an apoplexy, or a stroke. Mrs. Malone looked into the study an hour after lunch (indeed it was about Jane Bolland’s bill), and you know he was always a heavy eater. She saw him lying face downwards on the table, with a telegram in his hand. She screamed to Jane, and between them they lifted him up, and he was dead, stone dead, with the red cat sitting beside him. Mrs. Malone has been from one faint into another ever since, and I just ran over to tell you,” and she gasped for breath.

After this announcement there was a profound silence for some seconds, and then Betty said:

“How dreadful! How sudden! Why I was speaking to him this morning as he drove past the gate.”

“Well, you will never speak to him again,” returned Maria, emphatically.

“Poor Mrs. Malone,” continued Betty. “Who is with her and Cuckoo?”

“No one, so I just come to fetch you, Betty; you know the ways of the house; they are used to you, and there must be some one to keep things together. They say Mrs. Malone is in for some illness from the shock, and you know what Cuckoo is. She has been screeching and crying ever since it was found, at three o’clock.”

Yes, the big, burly, loud-voiced Major that had driven past the gate flourishing his whip a few hours ago was now merely “it,” and had been laid out on the study sofa, awaiting the county coroner.

“May I go, Aunt Emma?” enquired Betty. “I think I might be of some use. I can nurse a little, and I know all the keys.”

“To be sure you can go,” returned her cousin promptly, “get ready at once.”

Betty’s services at such a time would cement the intimacy between the families, and draw the houses of Noone and Bridgetstown more closely together; of course George would be coming home. Then, to Maria: “Have you telegraphed for Mr. Holroyd?”

“No, I never thought of him. I am glad you reminded me.”

“Shall I telegraph?” said Belle eagerly.

“Oh no, just give me his address, and I will send a wire as I pass the post office. Dr. Moran is up there. He can do no harm to a man once he is dead, but we shall want some one with some sense. From what I can gather, affairs are in an awful state. I should not be surprised if the creditors seized the body; there will be nothing but debts coming in to the widow.”

“Oh, I hope not, poor woman,” said Mrs. Redmond sympathetically.

“This was the Derby day, you know, and the Major has lost tremendously. He backed some horse for a great deal, and the telegram in his hand said: ‘King Canute not placed.’”

“You don’t think he—he made away with himself?” said Mrs. Redmond in a mysterious manner.

“Oh, no; it was just this bad news on the top of a very heavy lunch that killed him. Dr. Moran said it was—not that he knows much about it.”

“Still, I suppose he knows apoplexy from suicide,” said Belle briskly.

Leaving Maria to enlarge on the tragedy and the dismal prospects of the Malones, Betty hurried away to put on her hat, and to pack a small hand-bag with necessary articles, and in a very short time she and Maria were walking over to Bridgetstown in the cool summer night. At Bridgetstown all was confusion; lights were flitting from window to window, and crowds of “well-wishers to the family,” pervaded the kitchen, passages and hall. Luckily Miss Dopping and Mrs. Maccabe had arrived upon the scene. The former locked the study, and then cleared the upper passages of sympathetic and excited neighbours, whilst Mrs. Maccabe made very short work of the lower regions; even Jane Bolland (who almost represented the local press) was swept out as mercilessly as Foxy Joe. By twelve o’clock at night, Betty was left alone, and was the temporal head of that large, silent, disorganised mansion. Cuckoo had cried herself to sleep, and Mrs. Malone was in a kind of restless slumber. She went round the house with a candle in one hand, and a bunch of keys in the other, carefully bolting doors and windows, and locking up presses and drawers. Next day the inquest was held, and Mrs. Malone was seriously ill, rambling in her mind, and calling for Denis, or thanking George in extravagant terms for his great generosity, pleading with the creditors for time, and with the Major for money, and showing threatening symptoms of brain fever. On Betty fell all the responsibility until George’s arrival. She answered notes of enquiry, saw people, wrote letters, ordered mourning, nursed Mrs. Malone, and managed the housekeeping. Belle strolled up in the afternoon and looked over the house, critically examined the old silver wine coolers, and branch candlesticks, wondered if they were Malone or Holroyd heirlooms? and then returned to Noone to practise some songs for George, specially that one of almost deadly significance:

The following morning George arrived, pale, dusty, and haggard from incessant travelling.

“You here,” he said to Betty, as she met him on the stairs. “How good of you; I half expected to find you.” He went up immediately, and saw his mother in her darkened room. She stretched out both her thin, hard-worked hands, and exclaimed, “Denis! No, it’s George.”

“George, I am thankful you have come. Betty is here too. You and she must manage everything. Oh, my poor head! Oh, George, wasn’t it dreadful? I think I am going mad, I am sure I am;” and then she began to wander and talk about Denis. “Oh, my dear boy, such a bill from Nolan’s for you. I don’t know what I am to do about it. I can never, never squeeze it out of the housekeeping money. Last time, you know, I sold two dozens of the large silver forks and an old teapot, but I am always in terror lest they should be missed.”

Betty hurried George away, before his mother began to talk about him. He and Belle seemed a good deal on her mind, and she would urge him imploringly to “have nothing to say to Belle Redmond. She is just a garrison hack, and very selfish, giddy, and ill-tempered. I wish you would fall in love with Betty;” it would never do for this constant appeal to come to George’s ears. Next to Denis’s debts it was ever on her tongue. “George, you have been so good to me, I wish you had a nice wife! I wish you would marry Betty Redmond. She may not be as handsome as Belle; but she is young and pretty, and good; oh, do marry Betty Redmond.”

Betty, who had almost driven him out of his mother’s room, said with her finger on her lips:

“She must be kept perfectly quiet and know nothing. Her mind has had a great shock, but if left quite undisturbed she will rally; so Dr. Moran says. Now if you will come downstairs, I will get you some breakfast. I daresay you are very hungry.”

Whilst he sat over his meal, Betty gave him a hasty outline of what had occurred; of what she had done; of what there was to do; and handed him a truly formidable packet of letters—chiefly bills.

“And now that you have arrived,” she concluded, “I think I shall go home. I can come up here every day, and stay from morning till evening.”

“No, no, please do not,” he interrupted hastily. “I could never get along alone. You would not expect me to do the housekeeping. Who is to nurse my mother, and befriend Cuckoo, and look after the servants? If you will only stay for a short time, you will be doing us the greatest kindness. My mother is so fond of you. You said you were her eldest daughter, and I am sure you would not desert her now.”

And Betty remained. Pale-faced hysterical Cuckoo was her shadow, helpless but affectionate, following her in and out of the rooms, and in and out of the house, like a dog. Betty wrote, and sewed, and nursed, and personally interviewed anxious callers, undertook all arrangements about the luncheon after the funeral, hemmed black hat-bands, and made Cuckoo’s frock. At first it seemed strange to George, that he and Betty should be virtually the head of this large, disorderly house, sitting opposite to each other at meals, just as if they were the real master and mistress, and laying their heads together in many anxious consultations over grave matters. Betty was an invaluable nurse, so light-footed, cheerful and firm; she spent a good deal of her time in the invalid’s room, and George passed many weary hours in the study, endeavouring to evolve some order out of chaos. Each morning the post-bag was heavy with bills, large, clamouring, and alarming. There were bills to take up and renew, there were mortgages, there was every description of angry dun. Major Malone’s creditors had long passed from the obsequious to the formally polite, the polite to the freezingly-laconic, from the freezingly-laconic to the threatening stage.

George’s cheek burnt, as he glanced at some of these effusions, and his head ached, and his heart sank, as he went over them. Dozen after dozen. What were company’s accounts or mess accounts in comparison to these? At length he called in the aid of the family solicitor, and between them they endeavoured to reach the bottom of affairs. After groping for several days, among a perfect sea of debts, they came to the conclusion that Major Malone—who had never known any personal inconvenience from want of money, who had brow-beaten all his creditors, and who had the most imposing funeral that had been seen for years in those parts—had died as much a pauper as if he had breathed his last in the county workhouse. The place was gone from the Malones for ever. Also the farms, the stock, the silver, and the furniture. All that Mrs. Malone could claim or carry from her home was her own exceedingly shabby wardrobe. She and Cuckoo were literally penniless; her jointure had been disposed of, and gambled away; she had not a pound in the world; her very bed was the property of a money-lender; there was not a scrap of salvage out of the wreck. Loud-voiced angry men and women, some with hooked noses, pervaded the avenue and grounds, and the house was almost in a state of siege!

“What was to be done?” George asked himself, as with a burning head he walked up and down the long garden walk in the cool June evening, after hours spent in writing letters, and holding interviews. He must get his mother and Cuckoo away to some quiet suburb near Dublin, where Cuckoo could be sent to school, and where they could live cheaply. To ensure their existing at all, he must at once hand over almost the whole of his own private income; four hundred a year would be little enough for them to live upon, for his mother was a bad manager, and had caught her husband’s craze for running up bills. Yes, he saw nothing for it but to relinquish his own small fortune. This he could contemplate with equanimity; he could live without it.

But another duty was ten times more difficult. He must give up Betty. How could he relinquish Betty? How was he to live without her?

Betty had long ago made her peace, though she had never breathed a word of her mistake that evening in the meadow lane. Absence had not obliterated her image from his mind—quite the reverse. He saw her now in the fierce light that beats upon people with whom you live in hourly contact. He saw her devotion to his mother. Her unselfishness and energy, and cheerfulness, were all made known to him. She was not merely a very pretty acquaintance, with lovely grey eyes and a merry laugh, who sat a horse to perfection. She was something more in his eyes; she was the girl he loved.

He never cast a thought to Belle. Betty had swept her out of his mind, and, so to speak, closed the door. She came to Noone, almost daily, and looked into his face with a tender sisterly sympathetic gaze, and asked for his dear mother, and sighed, and “hoped that Betty was of some use! She was a good, willing child, and fond of nursing, though, perhaps, a little brusque and rough. Now I myself,” said Belle, “am so exquisitely sensitive, that I cannot bear to see grief or pain; it makes me ill, but I have felt for you acutely. I have thought so much of you, dear Mr. Holroyd, in all your trouble,” and tears actually trembled on her lashes—theatrical tears.

“Words are cheap,” thought George as he walked with her to the avenue gate, when she bade him a lingering good-bye. Give him deeds—one night of watching, against fifty pretty speeches. His eyes were opened widely now, and he appraised pretty, worldly, selfish, Belle at her true value.