Interference

A few people in the station knew that the Collector was expecting a niece, but the news never reached George’s ears. He did not frequent the ladies’ room at the Club, nor other likely sources of general or particular information. Belle hugged her secret in silence, as far as he was concerned, and implored Captain La Touche (who had his suspicions about this other Miss Redmond, and was prepared to stand by for some frightful domestic explosion) not to breathe a word on the subject. It was to be a grand surprise for George.

Mr. Redmond himself escorted Betty from Bombay, and the morning after their arrival Belle hurried over at an early hour, to greet her cousin, whom she nearly smothered with her caresses. She looked critically at Betty, as they sat over “chota hazree” in the pretty fern-lined verandah, and she told herself that her cousin was much changed. She was more composed, more self-reliant, and—was it possible?—dignified. She carried herself with quite an air of distinction, and was remarkably well dressed. Belle would certainly think twice before patronising, bullying, or storming at this Betty. And how Belle’s tongue ran on. She scarcely gave her companion time to answer a question; volubly setting forth her delight at her arrival, the condition of her own health, the state of her wardrobe, asking in one breath what sort of a passage she had had, inquiring for the Finnys and Moores, and how hats were worn; giving hasty and not always pleasing sketches of the other ladies in the station, and winding up with an imperious command to come over and see her bungalow, “only next door, only in the next compound.”

Betty assented, saying with a laugh, as Belle took her arm, “I don’t even know what a compound is; it might be a lake or a parish.”

Mrs. Holroyd had done up her house in honour of her cousin’s arrival; re-arranged the draperies, replaced the palms and re-adjusted the furniture, and proudly convoyed her from room to room.

“You will find George a good deal changed, very gloomy and silent,” she remarked, as she displayed his dressing-room, with its rows of boots and saddlery. “My dear, you never know a man’s real character till you marry him. In old days he used to be rather jolly, now——” and she turned up her eyes, and threw up her hands dramatically, “he is like the chief mourner at a funeral. By the way, Betty, why did you not marry Ghosty Moore? You were mad to refuse him! I warn you that you won’t do half as well out here.”

“But I don’t want to do half as well,” returned Betty gaily.

“You don’t mean to say, that you are going to be an old maid?”

“Why not? I am convinced that I should be a delightful one.”

“Rubbish! I know the style. Godmother to every one’s horrid baby; sick nurse to all the wheezy old women; confidante in love affairs; peace-maker, and general consoler in times of domestic affliction. Ugh! sooner than play such a rôle I’d die.”

“No, no, Belle, you have a kind heart, you would play your part more creditably than you pretend.”

“Look here, Betty,” she exclaimed, inconsequently, “has he said a word about the diamonds? I suppose not yet—unless he mentioned them in the train. I mean your uncle, of course, and of course they will be yours. What a dry old creature he is. Quite gritty. Has he taken to you, dear?”

Betty blushed, and before she had time to answer, Belle added:

“He told me not to chatter about you; and only fancy, George does not know that you are expected, much less that you have arrived.”

“What!” exclaimed Betty, her blush deepening to scarlet. “Oh, Belle, you are not in earnest!”

“To be sure I am in earnest. I kept it as a surprise for him,” and as the sound of clattering hoofs was heard rapidly approaching—“Here he is.”

She and her visitor were already in the hall, as George cantered under the porch, and she ran to the door, screaming out, “George, guess who is here. Guess, guess!”

He, supposing it to be Captain La Touche, or some other brother officer, stood for a moment giving orders to his syce, and then turned to ascend the steps.

But who was this to whom Belle was clinging? His heart seemed to contract; his head felt dizzy—as he recognised Betty. Betty, grown to womanhood, and prettier than ever. In one lightning flash he contrasted the pair before him. The little dark, sallow woman, with the shining teeth and tropical eyes, who was the wife whom fate had sent him, and the pale, slight, graceful girl, who was his first love, his heart’s desire, the wife that he had lost!

George, as he gazed, became as white as death; he slowly raised his chin-strap, and removed his helmet, and ascended the steps with much clattering of sword and spurs. He could not speak, were it to save his life. The situation was too strong for him. He ventured to look at this rather stately maiden, expecting to see certain disdain, and possibly hatred in her eyes, but no, she met his gaze with a glance of unaffected friendship, and actually offered him her hand.

“George,” cried Belle excitedly. “How funny you are! Don’t you remember Betty? This has been my secret, and you don’t know what it has cost me to keep it, but I thought that it would burst on you as such a delightful surprise.”

George found his tongue at last, as he said in a level, expressionless voice: “This is indeed a most unexpected pleasure! When did you arrive?”

“Last evening by the mail,” rejoined Betty with desperate cheerfulness.

“I little guessed when I heard yesterday that Mr. Redmond had gone to Bombay to meet a lady who that lady was. Belle,” turning to his garrulous wife, “I see that you can keep your own counsel.”

“Can I not? Betty, you may trust me with all your love affairs. I am sure you have had at least one, and you will find me a most discreet confidante.”

“How did you leave them all at Ballingoole?” enquired her husband precipitately.

“Very well, just as usual.”

“And did you see my mother lately?”

“Yes, just before I started. I have brought you a small parcel from her and Cuckoo.”

“I suppose Cuckoo is growing up.”

“She is grown up, in her own estimation; she wears long dresses and has abolished her pigtail, and is really quite a nice-looking girl.”

At this statement, Belle broke into a peal of derisive laughter, and said, “And pray what has become of Brown, Jones and Robinson?”

“Poor Brown is dead; he died of apoplexy, just like any rich old gentleman. Mrs. Finny has taken Robinson, and Miss Dopping, Jones. I was thinking of bringing him out, but I did not know whether Uncle Bernard liked dogs.”

“And now you know that he is a dog-ridden man—dogs clamouring at his table, dogs at his heels, dogs everywhere.”

“Yes, and all fox terriers, but none to compare with Jones. Uncle Bernard has told me to write for him, and as he is a dog of independent means he can pay his own passage. By the way, as I don’t see him, I suppose ‘Mossoo’ is dead.”

“Dead,” echoed Belle in her shrillest key. “How dreadfully unfeeling you are, Betty! Do you suppose for one moment that you would see me laughing and talking if I had lost him? No, thank goodness! ‘Mossoo’ is in splendid health; this is his morning for the barber. If anything were to happen to ‘Mossoo’ it would break my heart. I always hope that I may die before him.”

“Oh, Belle!” exclaimed her kinswoman in a shocked voice. “I see you are just as bad as ever, and now,” opening her white umbrella, “I really must be going. Uncle Bernard will think that I am lost. Good-bye, Belle. Good-bye, Mr. Holroyd,” and she went down the steps and walked quickly away, with Belle’s last sentence ringing in her ears:

“Not Mr. Holroyd, Betty; you must call him George.”

George had stood listening to his wife and her cousin like a man in a dream. Was it real—was this girl Betty?

How bright and merry she was, how her eyes sparkled and smiled—was she a marvellous actress, a woman with matchless self-control; or else had she never cared? Most likely she had never cared.

She was young, and happy, and free, whilst he was bound, and fettered, and wretched.

“Well, George,” said Belle angrily, “I really think you might have offered to walk back with her, I do indeed. It’s rather hard on me that my husband can’t be civil to the only friend I have in the world. Do you dislike her?”

“No, why should you suppose so?”

“Then why did you not talk? Why were you so stiff and ceremonious—so different from what you used to be at Noone? You hardly spoke to her, and she is like my own sister; you might have kissed her. I am sure she expected it.”

“And I am sure she did nothing of the kind,” he returned sharply, and then he went into his writing room, closed the door and took off his mask.

This was the refinement of torture, the devil himself had arranged this meeting!

Surely his lot was bad enough as it was—a squalid home, a scolding wife, a broken career. For staff appointments were inaccessible, he would not dream of applying for one. People would as soon have the cholera in the station, as the notorious Mrs. Holroyd—and now, as the crown and flower of all his sorrows, here was Betty, come to witness the misery, the horror, the daily heart-sickening humiliation of his married life, and would naturally say to herself:

“It was for this he forsook and forgot me.”

And she would never know. He must be for ever silent. In his mind’s eye he saw Belle, with her irrepressible tongue, throwing a lurid light on their domestic life, on their quarrels, on their social misfortunes, and on all his shortcomings. At the very thought he clenched his hands fiercely and great beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. He saw his future, the future he had chosen, stretching out before him—an awful, barren waste. He saw that he had made a hideous mistake, and the iron of a great despair entered into his soul.

“So you have been over the way already?” exclaimed Mr. Redmond as his niece joined him. “Why, you look quite pale, the journey has knocked you up, what possessed you to go out?”

“Oh, I am not the least tired; it is no distance; and you know we are very old friends. Belle came to fetch me.”

“As long as she does not come and fetch me, I don’t care. Yes, my dear, I don’t like your cousin; thank goodness, your very distant cousin. She is the only drawback to Mangobad.”

“Oh, Uncle Bernard, I am so sorry to hear you say so.”

“Do you like her?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, of course I do,” returned Betty, and she believed that she was speaking the truth.

“Well, my dear, you are the mistress of this house, and I wish to see you make yourself at home and happy. Have her here as much as ever you like when I am away, but I entreat and implore of you to keep us apart, I am afraid of my life of her. I am not joking—I am paralysed by the mere terror of her presence, I give you my honour—I am indeed.”

In one respect George’s prognostications were correct. Belle made Betty her confidante. She went over to see her daily, to “chota hazree” or tiffin or tea—always at hours when the master of the house was at Cutcherry. She liked to turn over Betty’s dresses, to unburthen her mind, and to drive out in the Collector’s easy landau, and under the wing of the Collector’s pretty niece worm her way back into social importance. (No one recognised an effort on Betty’s part, and she only knew it herself, when she realised what a relief it was to be alone with her uncle.) This was the bright side of the shield; it had its reverse. It was hard to see a girl, who had always been in the background, placed above her, living in a luxurious home, driving in London-built carriages, presiding at splendid dinners, and attended by obsequious and numerous chaprassies. Luckily for her own peace, the new queen gave herself no airs; she was as kind, as generous, and as sympathetic as ever, but on one subject she refused, fiercely refused, to sympathise—George. She would never listen to a word against him. Once she turned a white resolute face on Belle, and said very sternly:

“You say that he is an excellent husband, nurses you when you are ill, gives you everything you ask for, presses you to buy new dresses, and to go to the hills, has never begun a quarrel, never gambles, drinks, or flirts; what do you want?”

“He is all you say, but he is odd. He—only to you would I tell this, Bet—”

“Don’t, don’t, I won’t hear it!” cried her companion passionately, and putting her fingers up to her ears.

“It’s nothing bad,” screamed Belle, pulling away one of her cousin’s hands. “It is only this. George, I daresay, likes me as well as most men like their wives, and he is far more polite and considerate than one out of fifty, but I am sure he has never been in love with me. There is no harm in telling you what is true. I cannot grumble, for I have never been in love with him; we are not really sympathetic. He is scrupulously polite, and attentive and kind, but he hates ‘Mossoo.’ I have heard him swear at him, and he is so reserved and undemonstrative. There is a veil across his heart that I have never been able to tear aside. He as good as told me once, that he had liked some one—and once means always with him, he is so pig-headed! Oh, if I only knew who she had been, or who she is,” and her eyes blazed dangerously, “how I could hate her. I suppose, Betty, you have no idea? You know the Malones so intimately. Did they ever drop a hint?”

“Never,” she responded in a low, quiet voice.

“Oh, well then I can’t make it out! I should have thought you might have known—you were such friends with that odious little tell-tale Cuckoo—and that if anyone could have told me, it would have been you.”