Interference

With the first appearance of punkhas, and the first “notice about ice” most of the people at Mangobad fled away to Simla, Mussoorie, or Naini-Tal—chiefly to Naini-Tal. Mr. Redmond’s face was an amusing study (in black) when Belle suggested in her most kittenish and effusive manner, that “she should share a house with him, as George could only get two months’ leave, and that it would be great fun to live together!” but Mr. Redmond grimly declined this unalluring proposition in a few brief words, and subsequently (purposely) took a mansion that set the whole length of the lake, and a distance of two miles, between his abode and Mrs. Holroyd’s cheap, damp, out-of-the-way little bungalow—for Belle was now nothing if not economical, and thrifty, to the verge of parsimony, save in the matter of her personal adornment. Naini-Tal, named after the goddess Naini (or Nynee), is a lake that lies six thousand feet above the plains, in the lap of the Himalayas; the surrounding hills rise from the edge of the water and are covered with houses half hidden among trees. These houses are reached by narrow paths, in some instances goat tracks, and the only means of locomotion is either on a pony’s back, or in a jhampan or dandy, carried on the shoulders of four men. A jhampan—the gondola of the hills—is something between a chair and a coffin, and, to an uneducated eye, the first glimpse of Naini-Tal, with its crowds of people being borne along, suggests the victims of some frightful colliery or railway accident. But a nearer inspection shows smartly dressed ladies, reclining in gaily painted dandies, and borne by jhampannies in gorgeous liveries. Each memsahib dresses her bearers brilliantly, and racks her brains to devise some novelty that will distinguish her from the rest of her neighbours! You can descry her while she is yet afar off. You know where she is calling, and where she is shopping, when you see her blazing team squatting outside—with the surreptitious huka—awaiting her reappearance. Now you meet a green and yellow set, next a scarlet and blue, after that, an orange and crimson, jostling others who are all orange. What burlesques of family liveries! What travesties of monograms emblazoned on the bearers’ broad chests! Naini-Tal is a pretty place, especially by moonlight, or when the surrounding hills are reflected in the lake. It is in the shape of a cup, or a great extinct crater, and you have to climb a thousand feet to get a view of the line of everlasting snows, commanded, as it were, by Nunga-Devi, the “Storm Goddess,” standing out sternly against the steel-blue sky. The only flat space is the Mall round the lake, and the polo ground. There are lovely walks, if you do not object to stiff climbing, and once arrived you find yourself, as it were, lost in the woods, among moss and rocks and overhanging trees with thick fringes of ferns covering their outspread branches. Here you get a peep of the lake—there of the distant blue plains. True, these walks have some drawbacks. They are excessively slippery in damp weather, and panthers lie in wait for dogs (and are particularly partial to fox terriers), moreover, greedy leeches accompany the unsuspecting pedestrian to his, or her, own house. Naini-Tal is gay! What popular hill station is not? Balls, races—yes, races—regattas, and picnics; theatricals, tableaux, and concerts all succeed one another in rapid succession, and when early in May new arrivals come swarming up from the plains, the hotels are crammed, and every day half-a-dozen new sets of jhampannies, carrying a new memsahib, appear on the Mall, and dozens of gallant sahibs come cantering up from the Brewery, with a syce clinging to their ponies’ tails, who would believe in that terrible story about Friday, the 18th September, 1880, when, after two days’ torrents of rain, during which everyone was a prisoner to the house, and cut off from their neighbours, there was a hollow rumble—then arose a red, dusty cloud, like fire, and when that cloud had dispersed, and the mist had lifted, the Assembly Rooms, the Victoria Hotel, and several houses had been effaced—swept away and engulfed in a moment, and with them a hundred souls. There are occasional little landslips during the monsoon. Rocks come thundering down, tons of earth crumble off, the cart road “goes” annually, but on the whole Naini-Tal is considered as safe as its neighbours. High up on a hill among rocks and trees, in a somewhat inaccessible spot, you come across a board on which is painted, “Captain Holroyd, Royal Musketeers,” and near it a box for visitors’ cards (which is almost always empty). If you follow the path, you arrive at a dreary-looking, one-storeyed house, with no view, and the reputation of being very damp, and of having a family of needy panthers among the surrounding rocks. If you penetrated to the drawing-room, the chances are ten to one that you would find Belle cowering over the fire with a shawl on her shoulders and “Mossoo” in her lap, and two to one in a bad temper—both mistress and dog alike victims to ennui. “She was no one up here,” she grumbled to Betty every time she saw her. “She was a Collector’s niece, and asked out to big dinners every night, and taken to picnics up Diopatha and Iopatha, or down to Douglas Dale, but of course that was partly because Mr. Redmond entertained! She did not (and so much the better for Naini-Tal). They had got up theatricals—people that knew nothing about them, that could not act one little bit, and they had never even consulted her, or asked her to take a part. Of course that was all jealousy, and pitifully transparent! They had heard of her acting at Lucknow, and Mangobad, and seen the account of it in the papers, and were afraid of her cutting them all out. Her reputation had come up before her (it had indeed), and George said it was too soon after her mother’s death to go to balls—George was so peculiar,” and so on, in the same strain for about an hour. Belle arrayed her jhampannies in the smartest suits in the station, and excited quite a sensation as she was carried triumphantly along the Mall. But alas! She had only the clothes now, and no men to wear them; and without jhampannies a lady is comparatively a prisoner. As a class, these sturdy, jovial, brown hill men are most independent; give them wood tickets, their mornings to themselves, and no late hours, and no heavy passengers—give them smart suits and caps, and warm blankets, and they will take you out once or—peradventure at a pinch—twice a day, without grumbling. But when a lady, be she ever so light, is always calling for them and harrying them, when she takes them long and steep paths to pay needless visits, and beats them with her parasol, why they figuratively snap their fingers at her and go!—and what is worse, they boycott her in the bazaars. Belle was in a bad plight; she could only join the giddy throng below at the Assembly Rooms, or round the lake, and polo ground, when she could obtain coolies at double fare!

On these days, smartly dressed in what she called second mourning, she descended and paraded the Mall with Betty, went out in a wherry with George, had tea and ices at Morrison’s shop and enjoyed herself considerably, forgetting for the time her woes, her hateful servants, and her dismal, murky house.

At the opposite end of the lake, in a good situation, you come upon a fine two-storeyed abode, with Mr. Redmond’s name on the gate board and Miss Redmond’s box full of cards. He was popular, despite his eccentricities; everyone knew that if his bark was loud, his bite was nil; and Betty was much admired as she rode along the Mall and walked on the “Berm” between rows of discriminating British subalterns, sitting on the rails arrayed in boating flannels and gorgeous “blazers.” She was in constant request, as Belle had complained, but gave up many a pleasant engagement (to boat, to ride, to play tennis) to climb that weary hill, and to sit with that querulous, discontented little creature; who imperatively demanded her visits, and yet when she came, never ceased to scold her sharply for her dress, her friends, and her airs!

The monsoon broke with a violence peculiar to the Himalayas, the rains descended, and the floods came foaming down the mountains, the same mountains and the lake being swallowed up in mist, and all but the most stout-hearted (and booted) were prisoners to the house. Belle was alone. She was laid up with fever, and she wrote such a piteous scrawl, that Betty, in spite of her uncle’s angry expostulation, consented to go to her, and cheer her up and stay a week! She evolved some order in that cheerless home, tidied up the drawing-room, put away Belle’s old “chits” and papers, and scraps, and “Mossoo’s” bones, coaxed some servants into the empty godowns, for there was not one on the premises, but a deaf old ayah and a waterman. Belle enjoyed the transformation and the company of a bright companion, and was better, and out, and gay. At the end of the week, George returned from a signalling class at Ranikhet, rode in quite unexpectedly, and his arrival was an excuse for Betty’s immediate departure, but Belle in vehement language that almost bordered on violent words, insisted that her cousin must remain one day longer, in order to be present at a little dinner party that included Captain La Touche and a neighbouring married couple. Her popular cousin was her social trump card; moreover, she looked to her to make the sweets, and decorate the table.

But when the hour came, although dressed, Belle felt too ill to appear. She had got her feet wet. She had a cold, and sore throat, and she was forced to stay in her own room by the fire, and dine in company with “Mossoo.”

She felt excessively irritable and ill-used, as the sounds of merry laughing and talking came from the adjoining dining-room; they were having a very good time, and she—how dull she felt! She had no amusement, not even a book; she rose and searched about for something to read. She went, as a last resource, into George’s dressing-room, but there she could find no food for her mind, save sundry Manuals of Infantry Drill and of Field Exercises, and half a dozen red-bound “Royal Warrants.” She was turning disconsolately away, when her eyes fell upon his keys. Of these he was always so careful—so suspiciously careful—and never left them about. Happy thought! She could amuse herself unusually well, in having a good rummage through his dispatch box. Perhaps she would discover some of his secrets. A husband had no business to have secrets from his wife; perhaps she would discover something about what she mentally called “the other girl.” With this honourable intention she carried the box into her own room, placed it on a table near the fire, and sat herself deliberately down before it. The key was easily found, and as easily turned in the lock; the lid was thrown open, and the upper tray scrutinised. Nothing but a cheque book, a banker’s book, some papers and envelopes, and a Manual on Musketry. In the lower compartment were some of his mother’s letters, a packet of paid bills, some recipes for dogs and horses, and at the bottom of all a sealed parcel. She felt it carefully. Yes—it contained a cabinet photograph—the photograph; she must, and would, see what the creature was like.

In a second the cover was torn off. But—but, who was this? holding it to the lamp with a shaking hand.

Betty!

At first, she could not realise the full extent of her discovery, she simply stared, and panted, and trembled. It meant nothing! Then her eye caught sight of the other contents of the packet—a little well-remembered brooch, a withered flower, and a letter in her mother’s handwriting.

As she read this, her breast heaved convulsively, the veins in her forehead stood out like cords, her fingers twitched, so that the paper between them rattled and was torn.

When she had come to the very end of it, she sat with her eyes fixed, her hands to her head, as if she had received a galvanic shock. “To think that all along it was Betty, the hypocrite, the viper, the wretch, that robbed me of my husband’s love. Oh, how I hate her! How I loathe her! How I wish she was dead! I see it all—all now. She stole him from me that time she went to the Moores, and oh, how false she has been ever since. How well they have kept their secret. I shall never believe in any one again, not in a saint from heaven. And I, poor fool, asking if she ever had a love affair! Oh, I could tear her to pieces. I could, I could,” and she gnashed her teeth, and clenched her hands, and “Mossoo” fled into hiding under a chest of drawers.

Not a thought of remorse for two lives sacrificed for her, not a thought of any one but herself, and her wrongs.

Now, she saw why George avoided Betty, at least, in public; now by the light of her discovery she saw everything; many puzzling circumstances were as plain as A, B, C, and here, at this present moment, that abominable girl was under her roof, sitting in her place, and entertaining her guests! Oh! Oh! Oh! it was past all endurance, and she began to pace the room almost at a run; her fury rising like a gale at sundown. She must wait (if she could) till those people had gone; it was after eleven; they must leave soon, and then——

It was a fearful night. Thunder rolled and crashed among the mountains, the rain came down on the zinc roof with a deafening roar, the paths were foaming water-courses, the water-courses boiling rivers; and now and then a furious blast shook the house to its foundation.

At last the laughing and talking ceased, the merry company had departed. She saw their lanterns dimly through the mist, and instantly rushed into the drawing-room. Betty was there, busily putting away cards and counters, and George, who had been speeding his guests, stood in the doorway.

In her furious precipitation, Belle knocked over a chair, and they both turned and saw her—saw her livid, distorted face, compressed lips and glittering eyes—that looked as if they were illuminated by some inward flame—and knew but too well what these signs portended.

“So,” she screamed, her piercing voice distinct above the thundering rain. “So I have found you both out at last! Oh! you false wretch,” shaking her own photograph at Betty, “how I would like to strangle you! You, that we all thought so quiet, so modest, and that was engaged all the time on the sly. You artful, bad girl, you robbed me—me—of his affections,” pointing to George. “He liked me first, he liked me best. He dares not deny it! I must say this for him, that whatever he is, he is no liar.”

All the time she was speaking—screaming, it might be called—she was tearing the photograph into atoms, with feverish, frenzied fingers, and with the word liar, she dashed them into Betty’s face.

“Belle,” said her husband sternly, “what are you about? Have you taken leave of your senses? What do you mean by treating your cousin in this way?”

“There,” she shrieked, “there, you take her part. You try and blind me still! Have I gone out of my senses? No, but I am going out of them! I have opened your box, I have read my mother’s letter. I know all. How dared you marry me?”

After this question, there was a pause for ten seconds, the rain and wind alone broke the silence, whilst the raging woman, from whom every restraint had fallen away, awaited his answer.

“I married you,” speaking with painful slowness, “because I thought it was the only thing to be done under the circumstances. I did my best to make you happy, I hoped——”

“Hoped! Thought!” she interrupted, shaking from head to foot. “Who cares what you hoped or thought?” And then she broke into a torrent of passion, in which scathing, scorching words seemed to pour from her lips one over the other, like a stream of lava. This, to the couple who had been mercilessly sacrificed for her advantage.

“Betty,” said George abruptly, “this is no scene for you; go to your own room.”

“To her room! go out of the house, go now!” cried Belle, stamping her foot; “now, this second, do you hear me?”

“To-morrow,” interrupted her husband, “not to-night, you could not turn a dog out in such weather.”

“No, but I would turn out a snake, a viper, a cobra.”

“You may be certain that Betty is not anxious to trespass on your hospitality, but she will stay as a favour, she shall not go out on such a night, I will not allow it,” he returned firmly.

“Very well then, I’ll go! The Burns will take me in. I refuse to remain under the same roof with that girl for another five minutes.”

“Do not be afraid, Belle, I will go,” said Betty, who had been hitherto too stunned to move or speak. “I will go this moment. You are a cruel woman, you have wronged both George and me, and you will be sorry for all you have said to-morrow.”

Belle’s voice drowned hers in furious protestations to the contrary, and she hastened away, threw on a waterproof, and twisted a scarf round her head, whilst George called for a syce and a lantern.

“Belle,” he said, as he re-entered, putting on his top-coat, and his face looked white and set. “This is about the last straw! God knows that I have done my best, or tried to do my best for you. After this we will live apart—apart for ever.”

Before she had time to reply, he was gone, he had quitted the room, and she saw him and Betty go forth into the sheets of rain, and the black surrounding darkness, in the wake of a syce with an oilskin cape over his head, and a lantern in his hand. She watched the trio descend the hill, till they and their flickering light were lost to sight.

Then she went and sat down beside the dying fire—feeling somewhat exhausted—and assured herself that she had done well, had acted as any other wife of spirit would have done, but her fury was abating and her confidence with it; cold remorse began to whisper in her ear, as she listened to the booming of the thunder and the roaring of the rain; they had nearly three miles to go by the long road, and Betty was in her evening dress and shoes! Of course George did not care for Betty now; even her distorted mind could not summon the ghost of a charge against him. She glanced over past months, with the piercing eye of a jealous wife. No, there was not a word or a glance, by which she could arraign him.

He had got over it ages ago. Betty would marry some wealthy man, and George was her husband. She must forgive them! At the end of half-an-hour’s solitary meditation, during which she had reckoned up her probable allowance and probable prospects at home, she actually had absolved them both. Betty had no business to have had an understanding with George when she was a mere child—and of course did not know her own mind; but Betty had always been good to her, forbearing, generous, and useful. Only that very morning she had cooked her a dainty little dish to tempt her appetite, and she had gone down in all the rain to get her a remedy for her cold, and a novel from the library.

And George? yes, he was good to her too; he never refused her money, he never flirted with other women, he always remembered her birthday, he wrote regularly when she was from home, and punctually met her at the station on her return. If he was cold and reserved, and hated French poodles, it was his nature, and he could not help himself. Looking round among the Lords and Masters of her numerous acquaintances, she could not name a woman who had a better husband than her own.

And supposing he had really meant what he said? There was a strange expression in his eyes,—a look that she had never seen there before, not even after she threw the tennis-bat at Mrs. Monkton! And once, in a passion, another lady told her that she wondered Mr. Holroyd did not get a divorce for incompatibility of temper! But no, no; nothing but death should ever part them. Her Australian trip had shown her one thing most distinctly—that alone, and unprotected by her popular, gentlemanly husband, she was a very helpless and insignificant little person. What was she to do? Perhaps he would never come back! The bare idea filled her with dismay. She was now all penitence (as usual). She would follow them instantly to Mr. Redmond’s door. She would make it up; she would abase herself; she would go by the short cut across the hill, and be there almost as soon as they were! No sooner thought than done. She ran into her room, and put on a cloak, and a pair of strong shoes, and going into the back verandah, called imperatively for a lamp and a guide.

But what hill servant, sleeping comfortably in his “comlee,” would respond to the screams of a bad memsahib—demanding a light and attendant, at one o’clock, and on such a night? As she had sowed, she reaped. No answer came, not a sound, not a sign, from the cluster of godowns at the back; for once she refrained from rousing them in person. She had no time to lose. She was obliged to hunt up a lantern, and to light and carry it herself; and with “Mossoo” for her sole escort, she set forth in the streaming downpour, and started rapidly up the hill.