Interference

On the strength of his increase of income, Mr. Holroyd purchased two ponies, and a cart (and this cart, it was noted, had a ladies’ step). He had long admired a certain empty bungalow with a large garden, and rose-screened verandah. More than once he had inspected the interior, and at last he boldly gave orders to the landlord to have the garden put in order, the hedges clipped, and the rooms matted. When it became noised abroad that George Holroyd had been seen looking over a large double house, that he had ordered a dinner-service, and a piano, the truth could be no longer concealed, he was going to be married! This was a fine piece of news for Mangobad. The men congratulated him somewhat sadly but the ladies made up for them in fervour, and were all on the qui vive to know what the bride would be like. Captain La Touche, being searchingly cross-questioned, was able to gratify them with a few particulars respecting her. She was young—only nineteen—Irish, and pretty, and, as far as he could make out, she would be an agreeable addition to their circle. Mr. Holroyd was not the least bashful in accepting their good wishes, and seemed anxious to bespeak their friendship for his future wife. She was so young and inexperienced, he declared—quite a child in many ways, and only hitherto accustomed to a very quiet country life. He was exceedingly grateful for any suggestions offered by notable housekeepers and a great deal of advice was placed ungrudgingly at his service. The Judge’s wife engaged a cook, khansamah, and ayah; the Chaplain’s sister superintended the purchase of lamps and kitchen utensils, the Colonel’s two daughters chose furniture for the drawing-room, and went over the rooms and discussed arrangements and ornamentation with zeal.

All at once the community were electrified to hear that Mr. Holroyd had suddenly changed his mind about what was called the “garden” bungalow, and was going into the two-storeyed one, which had so long stood empty—the bungalow in which the last tenant, Major Bagshawe, had cut his throat. What was the reason of such an extraordinary freak? Why exchange a modern, well-built house, with a cheerful aspect, for a gloomy tumble-down mansion—certainly more imposing, and standing in quite a park-like enclosure, but which had been abandoned to rats and ghosts for years. No one knew the motive for this strange proceeding—not even Captain La Touche.

A few days before “this mysterious caprice of George Holroyd’s,” the long desired mail had been received—the mail which was to bring him Betty’s answer in her own handwriting, instead of that of the telegraph Baboo. The night before it was delivered in Mangobad, he could scarcely close his eyes. He was astir by daybreak, and watching for the post peon long before that worthy began his rounds. Here he came in sight at last, and with a good plump packet of letters in his hand. George almost tore them from him, and then hurried into his room to read them in solitude, where no bearer with tea, or sweeper with broom, dared disturb him. There was one from his mother, one from his lawyer, one from Mrs. Redmond, one from Belle, but where was Betty’s? He turned them over very carefully, and then ran out after the dakwalla. “Hullo! Stop! Hold on!” he shouted (in Hindustani of course), “you have another letter for me.”

The man halted and showed his wallet; there was nothing else addressed to Mr. Holroyd, no, not even a trade circular. “There must be some mistake,” he muttered to himself, as he slowly retraced his steps. Could she have missed the mail? He must only content himself with Mrs. Redmond’s epistle for the present, and, happy thought, that thrifty old lady’s effusion might contain Betty’s letter after all! Alas, no, there was only one sheet of paper within the envelope, and this is what it said:

A rush of blood came suddenly to George Holroyd’s ears, the paper seemed to swim before him; he threw it down on the table, and placing both hands to his head, exclaimed aloud:

“I must be going mad! Either that, or she is writing from a lunatic asylum!”

After a moment’s pause, he once more snatched up the letter, and read on:

“Mentitor fortiter,” was Mrs. Redmond’s motto, and to do her justice, she lived up to it; in a crisis like the present what was a lie more or less? This notable falsehood gave a neat and suitable finish to the whole scheme. Moreover, like all lies of the most dangerous class, it contained a grain of the truth—Augustus Moore had known Betty from childhood, and a less keen-sighted woman than the mistress of Noone, could see that he was her slave; the match was merely a question of time.

“In withholding your offer from Betty,” the letter went on to say, “I am sparing you the mortification of a refusal. I have put the round people in the round holes in spite of you, you see, and by the time you are reading this, Belle (who knows nothing, poor darling) will be half way to India with the Calverts. Betty has been helping her most zealously in her preparations, and keeping up all our spirits with her merry ways, and gay little jokes and songs.

“I do not know what we should have done without her; she has not the faintest suspicion that you care for her, for all her thoughts are fixed in another direction. Be good to Belle—she is quite a child, a spoiled child in many ways; she is not much of a manager or housekeeper, for I have wished her to make the most of her youth, and only asked her to be happy and to look pretty. She is devoted to you, and has been so from the very first, though with true maidenly dignity she has concealed her feelings—even from me, but I know that the prospect of being your wife, has filled her with unspeakable happiness. Perhaps, after all, you may repudiate her love, you may refuse to receive her, and leave her a friendless, nervous, sensitive girl, unwelcomed in a strange land—only to return home broken-hearted, dis-illusioned, and disgraced; but I scarcely believe you will be capable of this, knowing that she loves you, confides in you, and has no friends in India. Do not answer this letter. I may as well tell you, candidly, that if you do I shall not read it, but will put it into the fire, for in my failing health, my medical man advises me strictly against any kind of unnecessary agitation. Pray, believe me yours most faithfully,

“Emma Redmond.”

By the time George Holroyd had come to the end of this precious epistle, it would be impossible to describe his feelings; they were a mixture of incredulity, horror, agonising disappointment, and uncontrollable fury.

“Mrs. Redmond was mad!” this he swore with a great oath; “or he was mad, and everyone was mad.”

He seized his mother’s letter, much as a drowning man clutches at a straw; it proved to be a somewhat querulous effusion, wondering that he had never given her a hint of his intentions, amazed to hear of his engagement to Belle, and pathetically imploring him to “think it over,” but wishing him every happiness—whatever his fate. Delighted at the news of his uncle’s generosity, and hinting (nay, more than hinting) that he might share some of his good fortune with Denis—openly stating that his poor dear brother wrote the most pitiful accounts of his circumstances, and that she was sure he would be annoyed to hear that he had actually applied to Mrs. Maccabe for pecuniary assistance, instead of to his own flesh and blood, and that a line to Denis Malone, care of the barman at the Kangaroo Arms, Albany, South Australia, would always find him.

George put this epistle aside, and tore open Belle’s envelope with a shaking hand.

When his eyes fell on the page beginning “My own, own darling,” he crumbled the letter up into a ball, and dashed it from him with anything but a lover-like gesture.

Then he rose and began to walk about the room like a man possessed. He might have guessed how it would be! Betty was not bound to him in any way, and whilst he had been toiling for her in silence, at the other side of the world—Ghosty Moore was within speech—within a ride!

Ghosty Moore was rich, young, and popular. He could give her everything her heart desired. She would marry him, and be beloved, admired and happy. A county lady with half a dozen hunters, and as many dogs as she pleased. As for him, his life was wrecked, it did not matter what became of him; he threw himself into a chair, leant his arms on the table, buried his head in them, and wished himself dead.

That Betty was lost to him was beyond doubt, and that Belle was on her way out to marry him, was also beyond doubt; but no, he said to himself fiercely, he would never make her his wife, and thus fulfil the schemes, and be the easy tool, of her iniquitous old mother; never!

To have the dearest hopes of his life dispersed by one shattering blow was surely sufficiently hard for a man to bear, but to have another fate imperatively thrust on him within the same hour—a fate from which his highest and best feelings instinctively recoiled—a fate that his heart most passionately repudiated—this was to drink the cup of bitterness to the dregs, twice!

And if he refused to accept Belle as his bride, what was his alternative? he asked himself, with fierce perplexity.

He felt dazed and stunned; the more he endeavoured to muster his thoughts, to pursue ideas, to reach some definite plan, the more unmanageable those thoughts and ideas became.

It was desperately hard to realise that one short ten minutes had changed the whole current of his life.

Even to one’s old familiar friend, I doubt if it is wise to give the entrée to your private room at all hours. He may chance to find a soul in earthly torment, a mind en deshabille, with the mask of conventionality, and the cloak of reserve, torn off, and thrown to the winds.

Captain La Touche was whistling cheerily as he crossed the verandah, and entered his comrade’s apartment. He looked cool, handsome, and debonnair in his creaseless white suit and spotless linen (he was such a dandy that he actually sent his shirts twice a month to England to be washed; and oh! feat beyond the dhoby!glazed). He had evidently had a good mail, for his face was radiant, and he carried a packet of letters, and a French comic paper in his hand. All at once his whistling ceased, as his eyes fell on his comrade’s prone head—and the torn and discarded letters scattered broadcast about the floor.

“Hullo, George, my dear old chap!” he exclaimed, “you have not any bad news I hope. No one dead, eh?”

George raised a rigid white face to his, and gazed at him blankly and shook his head.

“Your money gone again, eh?”

“No!”

“Oh, come then, it can’t be so very bad, pull yourself together, my son, and have a whisky and soda; you look as if you had been knocked into the middle of next week. What is it all about?”

“I’ve—I’ve a splitting headache.”

“Oh, and is that all?” rather dubiously.

“And some rather worrying letters,” he continued, making a great effort to carry out the second part of his visitor’s prescription. “I shall be all right by and by, don’t mind me.”

At first a wild idea had flashed through his brain. He would consult his friend, and put the whole story before him, like a hard case in Vanity Fair, and say, “supposing a man proposes for one girl, and another comes out instead, believing that she is the right one—what would you do? Marry her?” But as he gazed at Captain La Touche, that sleek, prosperous, cynical bachelor, Lord President of the Mess (sometimes a heritage of woe) and bitter enemy of matrimony, his heart failed him. “Joe,” as he was called, would explode into one of his loud bursts of laughter, and declare that it was the best joke he had ever heard in the whole course of his life! Instead of being sober-minded and sympathetic, he would chaffingly examine the capabilities of the subjects for burlesque treatment; he would be jocose and unbearable. But in this belief George did his friend injustice!

In one vivid mental flash, he saw the ordeal he would now have to face at mess, an ordeal he dared not confront. The good-humoured jokes, congratulations, and presents of his brother officers, were acceptable enough yesterday, but to-day they would be torture, as it were, searing a gaping wound with red-hot iron. How was he to assume a part—he being no actor at the best of times—the part of the happy and expectant bridegroom! His thoughts flew to a certain lonely dâk bungalow, about twenty miles out, rarely frequented, and sufficiently far from the haunts of men. He would go in at once for ten days’ leave for snipe shooting, put a few things together, and gallop out there as soon as orderly-room was over. He must be alone, like some wounded animal, that plunges into the thicket, when it has received a mortal hurt—that it may die apart from its fellows, and endure its agony unseen.

Once there, he would have time to advise with himself, to review the whole burning question, and to meditate on falsified hopes, abandoned aims, and a lost love.

The maturing of this sudden project did not occupy sixty seconds, and Captain La Touche was still standing interrogatively in the doorway.

“I’m not feeling very fit, Joe, the cramming is beginning to tell as you predicted. I think I shall go out for ten days’ snipe shooting, to blow the cobwebs out of my brains.”

“It’s too early for snipe,” objected his visitor, “make it the end of next week, and I’ll go with you, old man!”

“I saw several wisps coming in last evening and——”

“And of course I forgot,” interrupted the other jocosely, “your time is short, poor fellow, and who knows if it may not be your last shoot. Such things have happened! Where are you going?”

“I was thinking of Sungoo,” he returned rather nervously.

“Sungoo! A nasty feverish hole! I would not go there if I were you.”

“There are several first class jheels about, and I’d like to make a good bag,” returned the other, now lying as freely as Mrs. Redmond herself.

“Well, well, have your own way, you always do,” returned his chum with a French shrug of his broad shoulders. “’Pon my word, you gave me a jolly good fright, just now, I thought there was bad news, something up at home. By-bye,” and he opened his big white umbrella, and strode off to breakfast.

Sungoo dâk bungalow was retired enough for St. Anthony himself; it stood aloof from the high road, behind a clump of bamboos, and a hedge of somewhat dusty cactus.

George Holroyd’s active bearer made daily raids on the nearest village for fowl and eggs and goat’s milk, whilst his master paced the verandah, or tramped over the country, and fought with his thoughts, and endeavoured to shape out his future life. Willingly would he change his lot for that of one of the cheerful brown tillers of the soil, by whom he was surrounded, and whom he came across in his long and aimless wanderings. How absorbed and interested was that young fellow, as he sat at the edge of a tank, dividing his time between his bamboo rod, and bobbing line, and the inevitable huka that stood beside him.

He did not seem to have a care in the world!—and it was never likely to be his fate to marry a woman against his will! All the same, did his envious observer but know the truth, it was more than probable that the same young man had been married from his cradle.

Sungoo dâk bungalow was not only famed for seclusion and sport—it was notoriously unhealthy; the rank vegetation and the vapours from the neighbouring reedy snipe jheels made it an undesirable residence. Hideous spiders with wormy legs, and semi-tame toads abounded in the three small rooms. Mushrooms grew out of the walls, a family of noisy civet cats lodged in the roof, hundreds of frogs held oratorios in a neighbouring pond, rendering sleep impossible—and altogether it was as damp and dreary a dwelling as anyone could wish to see; and a man who had taken a dislike to existence could not have chosen a more congenial abode.

One day George’s bearer went considerably further than the nearest mud-walled village; he galloped post haste into Mangobad, and informed Captain La Touche and his brother officers that his master was very ill, in a raging fever, and “talking very strangely.”

“That’s it,” vociferated his chum, “I was afraid there was something up. You notice he never sent in a single brace of snipe, and he knows what a boon they are.”

He and the station doctor set off at once, and brought the patient in the next morning in a dhooly. He was still in a high fever, but perfectly conscious and alive to his surroundings.

For days he had been racked with an uncontrollable longing to see Betty only once, and to speak to her face to face—as vain a longing as that of the wretched captive in a deep, dark dungeon, who languishes to see the sun!

As Captain La Touche sat by him, and gazed at him anxiously, he opened his eyes, and said in a low voice: “Joe, I would give half my life to see her but for five minutes—and to speak to her face to face.”

Captain La Touche was exceedingly concerned, and subsequently told his brother officers that it looked like a bad business, for Holroyd was still delirious and wandering in his mind.

Ten days’ excellent nursing brought him round, and the doctor was most assiduous in what he called “patching him up” in order that he might be in time to meet the steamer. Nevertheless all George’s friends were shocked at the change that such a short illness had made in his appearance. He looked as if he had aged ten years in ten days; his eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, and he was so weak and emaciated that, according to one of his comrades, “he appeared to be walking about, to save the expenses of his funeral,” and in this cheerful condition he went down to Bombay, to accept the inevitable, and to receive his bride.