Interference

Betty almost ran down the footpath, her feet shod with indignation, and refused her companion’s proffered arm with a sharp gesture, that was nearer akin to passion than politeness. At first she hurried along bravely enough, but afterwards more slowly and painfully. What are bronze shoes, and silk stockings, among rocks and broken branches, and overflowing water-courses? One of her feet was badly cut, her hair had been blown adrift by the stormy rain that beat her and buffeted her so mercilessly. At last she was compelled to cling to the arm she had previously scorned; for as she stumbled forward in the wake of the blinking lantern and shivering syce, furious gusts of wind came sweeping down between Cheena and Diopatha, and threatened to carry her off her balance, and to extinguish the light. The pair made no attempt to speak, for their voices would have been lost amid the crash of the thunder, and the hollow roar of the torrents, as they tumbled tumultuously down the ravines, and poured into the lake with the noise of an explosion. Amid the unchanging fury of the storm, there were intervals of blinding light, alternating with spells of utter darkness. Once, in a comparatively sheltered spot, Betty halted to twist up her hair. As she did so, a dazzling white flash lit up the dark surrounding hills—the grey sheets of rain pattering into the lake—the streaming path—themselves.

There was a momentary lull, as if the raving, screaming wind was taking breath, and Betty said tremulously, but with perfect distinctness:

“George, to-night it must be good-bye between us; you will understand that it cannot be otherwise.”

“Yes,” he returned hoarsely, “I could never ask you to run the risk of such another scene. It must be as you say—God help us!”

A second flash, bright as day, illumined his face; it was ashen; and in the haggard eyes so near to hers there was a look of wistfulness and despair—such an agonised look, as the eyes of the dying wear when they take leave of those they love best, and pass away, alone, into that undiscovered country.

In a moment all was black again, and once more the pair resumed that struggle onwards, arm in arm, staggering against the wind, and wrapped in the darkness and the silence of their own thoughts. After half an hour’s scrambling and groping, and climbing of slippery paths that ran with water, bruised, drenched, beaten and breathless, they arrived at their destination, and were vociferously announced by the barking of half a dozen curs of high and low degree.

Mr. Redmond always retired late, and was still sitting up; reading—no—not a treatise on jurisprudence, but a French novel; he came in his dressing-gown and spectacles, and opened the door in person, and beheld his niece in a soaking evening dress, bareheaded, and almost barefoot; and Holroyd looking ghastly, with the rain pouring off his cap and moustache.

“What—what does this mean?” he demanded in a voice in which anger and amazement struggled for mastery. “Do you wish to murder the girl—sir—that you bring her out in such a plight on such a night?”

“I am more sorry than I can say, but I could not help it—I——”

“Come in, come in, man alive! and don’t stand dripping there, come in and explain yourself!”

“Uncle Bernard,” said Betty, taking off her cloak and throwing back her wringing hair. “He cannot explain—Belle and I have had a quarrel.”

“A quarrel about what?” turning the lamp full on her colourless face. Dead silence.

“There has been more than a quarrel! There is something in the background. Holroyd, you don’t leave my house till you explain the whole business.”

“Oh, uncle, do not keep him,” expostulated Betty. “Don’t you see how wet he is?”

“Then you shall tell me, run away at once, and put on dry clothes. I shall not go to bed till I have come to the bottom of this affair! What will every one say when they hear that your cousin turned you out of doors in the middle of such a night? Holroyd, in common Christian charity I must give you something to drink. I don’t want to have your death on my head, but mind you, I have not done with you. Have some old brandy, neat?”

“No, thank you, I must go,” and he glanced at Betty.

“Yes,” she said, approaching him quickly as she spoke. “You must forgive Belle; she will be very sorry; forgive her as a favour to me. Remember,” she added, almost in a whisper, “what you promised me last Christmas. Good-bye.” Her lips trembled, whilst her eyes dismissed him.

“Good-bye,” he echoed, in a husky voice, wringing her hand as he spoke. In another second he was gone—gone without a word or glance towards Mr. Redmond, and was hurrying down the hill at breakneck speed.

“Must I tell you, Uncle Bernard?” said Betty, when, after a short interval, she returned to the sitting-room, in a long, white, woollen gown, and with her hair hanging over her shoulders.

“Yes, you must tell me everything, and you must drink this cherry brandy.”

“I would so much rather not do one or the other.”

“And you will have to do both.”

“Then, Uncle Bernard, remember you make me tell what I have never told to a soul,” and her eyes flashed at him through tears of passionate pain. “But you stand in the place of my father.”

“I do, and you stand to me in the place of a daughter. Begin what you have to say—at once.”

“I—I—how can I begin?” she said, shading her face with her hands. “I knew George Holroyd very well three years ago. I was a good deal at Bridgetstown with his mother and sister, and—and—” she hesitated.

“And he made love to you,” continued her uncle bluntly.

“He could not marry, for he had no money; he was supporting his mother and sister, and he had but little besides his pay.”

“I am surprised he did not ask you to share that!” sneered her listener.

“No, no, he would not bind me to any promise, but he said that if his prospects improved—he would write.”

“And he never did. Oh, oh—I see it all!”

“Yes, he wrote and enclosed the letter to Mrs. Redmond, but Mrs. Redmond wanted him to marry her own daughter. She scratched out my name—and gave the letter to Belle.”

“What!” shouted Mr. Redmond, rising to his feet, “what madwoman’s nonsense is this?”

“It is true: the letter seemed to apply to either of us. Belle thought he liked her—she hated Noone, she was glad to get away from it—at any price,” she gasped, in short and breathless sentences.

“And you paid the price?”

To this question Betty gave no answer or sign, beyond a slight quivering of the lips.

“Well, go on,” continued the Collector imperiously.

“I never knew the truth, until Mrs. Redmond was dying, and then she told me all. Belle went out to Bombay in complete ignorance, and George met her, and married her.”

“The fool! the maniac! the great idiot!” cried Mr. Redmond, throwing up his hands. “He must have been out of his mind.”

“He believed that he was acting for the best,” said Betty with a kind of proud severity, “and I think he did right; what would have become of Belle, destitute and friendless? He has always kept his secret till now, but she opened his dispatch box, and read her mother’s letter; she never had a suspicion of the truth till to-night.”

“And the effect of her discovery?”

“Was to turn me instantly out of her house, but I know she will be sorry to-morrow—she always is.”

“Well—well—well,” turning about and pacing the room, with his hands clasped behind him under his dressing-gown. “I am fifty years of age, and this story—this extraordinary story—transcends everything in my experience either at home or abroad. Poor Holroyd, unfortunate devil! Betty, you will never cross her threshold, and never speak a word to that termagant again.”

“No, nor to him either, uncle; we agreed to-night that we would be strangers for the future.”

“Oh, ha, hum,” stroking his chin; “well I daresay you are right, you can’t cut a woman and know her husband.”

“And now, Uncle Bernard, I am so very, very tired, you will let me go, won’t you?”

She looked haggard and completely exhausted, her face was as white as her gown.

The horror and shame of Belle’s outbreak, that terrible walk through rain and darkness, the ordeal of having to lay bare her secret to her uncle, had been too much, even for her fortitude.

“Come and kiss me, Betty. I declare you are a good girl, you are a true Redmond, and have a fine moral backbone. Poor Betty, you have had a hard part to play.”

She approached and laid her lips softly on his forehead—lips that were icy cold; she was so grave, and pale, and so utterly unlike herself, that her uncle was slightly awed, and suffered her to depart in silence.

Mr. Redmond still sat up, and actually lit a cigar to soothe his ruffled feelings, and to re-arrange his thoughts.

“That old Redmond woman ought to have been transported. Supposing Betty had got the letter all right, and come out and married Holroyd? Well, he liked him, he used to be a capital fellow, but as it was, Betty could do far better, and marry someone in his own service.”

Poor Holroyd! he had made him his confidante about Hammond too. Yes, that was certainly an awkward mistake. It could not be possible that Betty had still—no—no, out of the question. However, she was a sensible girl, they had better be strangers in future, but he himself was not going to give up George’s acquaintance (man-like, he considered that a woman could easily make sacrifices that were disagreeable and unnecessary for him). They could still meet and dine at the club; they could go out shooting together. As to George’s wife, to relinquish her society was no hardship.

Meanwhile Captain Holroyd was re-turning homewards with headlong speed; he had now no girl companion to guide and protect, and as for himself, he did not care. At first he determined to go to an hotel, or the club, for the remainder of the night, but on second thoughts, he changed his mind. He had never been one to send the family linen to the public wash. He would endure to the end—and this was almost the end. It required a man with a more hopeful buoyant nature than his to resist sinking under the weight of his surroundings. He would abandon the struggle once for all. The life he led was not the existence of a self-respecting human being—it was the life of a dog. He would offer Belle a tempting allowance, leaving himself just sufficient for bare necessaries; he would tell her that he could endure her society no longer, and that she must accept it, and go—go home. If not, if she made a scandal, as she had once threatened, he would sell out, and join some exploring party in Africa, Australia, or Central America. Part they must; he was past the days of piteous protestations, caresses, and hysterics, and he was about to shape the rest of his life in another form. Belle and her mother had ruined his happiness; he was an embittered, disheartened, truly miserable man. All his best friends could give him was pity and sympathy. As to what “might have been,” he dared not trust himself to glance at it. He would free himself from Belle, and put half the world between himself and Betty.

With this stern resolution in his mind, he found himself once more at home—the door stood wide open, the lamp was flaring in the drawing-room, and that apartment was precisely as he had left it—with the overturned chair, and torn photograph, lying on the ground—but empty. Where was Belle? The house seemed unnaturally quiet; he looked into her bedroom, a pair of slippers lay in the middle of the floor, as if they had been hastily kicked off. He called; there was no reply; he searched, he took the lantern and went outside; the rain was abating, for it was near dawn. He held the light close to the ground, and saw the fresh footprints of two small shoes; they went up the hill, not down. In an instant the truth flashed upon him. In a fit of remorse, Belle had followed them and gone by the short cut—the “closed” road. He seized the lantern, now burning very faintly, and started at once in pursuit; for more than a mile he followed the pathway, now ascending, now descending, sometimes between rocks, sometimes between trees, sometimes along the bare edge of a sheer naked precipice; and then the light went out, but as a faint grey glimmer came creeping through the mists, he was able to make his way on at a steady pace, though his heart thumped loudly against his ribs, and his nerves were strung to their utmost tension, for a chill shadow of apprehension seemed to stalk beside him! Suddenly, turning a sharp corner, he was brought to a standstill, by a ghastly break in the narrow track. The hill above had slipped down five hundred feet, carrying with it, rocks, trees and pathway; loose showers of little stones were still trickling lakewards, and as the dawn came stealing over the crest of Cheena, and penetrated through the dispersing clouds, George was aware of a small object, a dog—shivering miserably on the brink of the gaping chasm, or running to and fro, with every token of anguish and despair.

Belle’s wish had been accomplished. “Mossoo” survived her.

THE END.

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