Interference

George Holroyd avoided the ladies’ room in the Club, the groups of ladies under the trees outside; he did not play tennis, and, owing to his wife’s mourning, he was not on duty at dances; therefore he and Betty rarely met, unless they came across one another out hunting.

On these matchless Indian mornings and evenings, when they drew the brakes and nullahs, and found; when there was a sound of horn and a rush and clatter of hoofs among the long grass and cane stubble, away over the plains, scattering dust and sand on the bye-roads, away, away after the wiry little grey fox with his black-tipped brush, and the fleeting, irregular pack of all sorts and conditions of dogs, Polygars, Rampore hounds, pariahs and fox terriers. Through the fields, scattering the cattle, through the woods, startling the fruit watchers, through shallow rivers, rousing the submerged water buffaloes. How good it is to be young, with every pulse throbbing, every nerve straining, away to where a little cloud of dust and a momentary scuffle, betoken a kill in the open.

Tippoo and Sultan, the long-legged Polygars, have overtaken and slain the fox. Poor Mr. Fox! You will never see your little family again, will never again bring them home a tender guinea fowl, or a fat pea chick; they will sit at the sunny side of the bamboo clump and watch for your return in vain. Your thick, black-tipped brush hangs at Miss Redmond’s saddle-bow, as she turns homewards, leading the van, charging through melon-fields, scouring over tracts of sands, jumping nullahs, fording rivers. But Mr. Holroyd, who was well to the front during the run, now reins in his hot-tempered Australian and lags conspicuously in the rear—Why? Only he and Betty knew the reason.

About six weeks before Christmas Mr. Redmond went out into camp for what is called the “cold weather tour.” It is a Collector’s duty to visit his tahsils or out-stations, and examine the general condition of his district, receive petitions and inspect tracts affected by flood or famine; it is thus that he sees the result of his previous six months’ government. Mr. Redmond departed from Mangobad, with the usual pomp and imposing train of camels, tents, horses and elephants, and Betty accompanied him. It was all new to her—a delightful novel life, and a blessed relief from the painful strain of her daily existence in cantonments, where the vicinity of George, and the perpetual presence of Belle was—only to her inmost thoughts did she whisper it—becoming insupportable. She enjoyed the change and complete freedom; the glories of a tropical dawn; the early marches through strange surroundings; the halts in the mango topes; the keen exhilarating air, and at night the great wood fires. She was left a good deal to herself, and this she enjoyed also, whilst her uncle conferred with his sleek serishtadars, received thousands of petitions, and dallies! strings of evil-smelling yellow marigolds, and sweet pink roses, and many visits from native gentlemen, on elephants or in palanquins. During these solitary hours, she read, or worked, or wandered about the adjacent jungle, in company with her own thoughts. Truly nature is a great physician of souls! The peace of the place descended into her heart, and soothed and hushed its repinings, as she drank in the exquisite atmosphere, the living silence of the jungle, broken only by the sound of her own footsteps, as she strolled beneath the Kuchnar, and sweet-smelling cork trees—treading tenderly on their fallen, withering flowers. She determined to be brave, to shut her eyes to the past, to make the best of the present, and of the new life that lay before her. She was only twenty, and she would not permit one misfortune to shadow all her days. She was resolved to make a second start, but she did not want a second lover. No! Although she assured herself emphatically that she had now no other feeling for George than sisterly affection, and intense pity, she meant to figuratively lock up her heart and throw away the key. She would not, and could not, bestow it on Mr. Hammond, Mr. Redmond’s friend—clever, agreeable, and popular as he was. No, nor on Captain La Touche, nor yet on Mr. Proudfoot. She would be her uncle’s life-long companion, she would bury the past, she would bear with Belle, and would think more of others and less of herself, and her own troubles. These, and many other good resolutions, came flocking round her as she strolled about the camp by day, or sat outside the tents—whilst Mr. Redmond dozed in his chair—staring into the big red fire in the still, cool night—a stillness only broken by the baying of pariah dogs in distant villages, the howl of the hungry, melancholy jackal, the shouts of the watchers in the fields scaring wild beasts from the crops of sugar-cane, bajra and jowar. But life was not always quiet and solitary. When the camp happened to be within a reasonable distance, many well-known faces from Mangobad surrounded the great, blazing logs, and many familiar voices broke the usual majestic silence.

The hospitable Collector invited out most of his friends, and Betty asked Mrs. Holroyd, but she remained only two days. She detested rural life, and so did “Mossoo.” She hated the spear grass that got into her petticoats and stockings, suspected snakes under every chair, and became hysterical on an elephant. She longed for her own safe fireside, her book and her arm-chair. Her husband had declined altogether, pleading duty. But one evening Mr. Redmond came across Captain La Touche and him, out shooting, and absolutely refused to take nay—it was Christmas Eve—he had at least twenty guests—he intended to have twenty-two—Mrs. Holroyd was in Lucknow, and Mr. Holroyd had not the ghost of an excuse! There was a grand Christmas dinner—with pretty Indian jungle decorations, real English plum-pudding, a monster turkey, and plenty of crackers, and good wishes. Afterwards the company set out in the moonlight to explore the camp, and visit the elephants and horses, before assembling around the great log fire to drink punch or mulled port, and play games. The night was clear and cold; and wrapped in a long red fur-lined cloak, Betty strolled now with one guest, now another, and finally found herself pacing the short dry grass—beyond the tents, with her uncle and George Holroyd! It was a magnificent Eastern night—such a night as entitles India to be called the land of the moon, as well as the land of the sun. The scene was almost as bright as day, and almost as still as death. Behind the Collector lay his snow-white camp beneath the mango trees—before him, a plateau, on the edge of which a mosque-shaped tomb stood out in dark relief against the sky—beyond the tomb, a wide plain, stretching away to the horizon, a rich cultivated tract, unbroken by aught save an occasional clump of sugar-cane, an occasional reedy jheel, with its fringe of waving water plants, and here and there, a great single forest tree.

“How quiet it is out here,” said Betty; “there is not a sound save the nightjar. I quite miss the bugles at Mangobad.”

“Can you distinguish them?” enquired George.

“No, I don’t think I can—except that one that seems to say, ‘come home—come home—come home.’”

“The last post,” explained her uncle. “I know them all down to the advance, ending in three C’s. How many a gallant fellow it has cost us! Did you get any snipe to-day, Holroyd?”

“Yes, but only four brace.”

“I went out yesterday, myself, to a most lovely spot, an ideal home for a snipe, and never saw a feather! Just a nice cover; nice feeding-ground. If I were a snipe, I would go and settle there at once, and take my family with me.”

“Is it possible that I see people ploughing at this hour, uncle?” interrupted Betty. “Six ploughs—beyond that brown patch.”

“Very possible! In the indigo season, it’s a common thing for them to plough all night. I suppose it is ten o’clock now. That reminds me that I have business with my sheristadar, and I must be going back, but you, Betty, need not come. Take Holroyd on and show him the tomb, it’s rather old and curious,” and turning quickly on his heel he left them abruptly; left them to their first tête-à-tête since they had parted that July day in the avenue at Noone.

“I must congratulate you on getting your company,” said Betty as they walked on together. “I heard the news just before dinner—I am so glad.”

Glad she might be, but she could scarcely command her voice. Oh, why had Uncle Bernard left them? left her without a pretence of escape. She must make the best of the situation, and summon all her self-possession and all her woman’s wit, to keep clear of one topic.

“Thank you. Yes, everything comes to those who wait.”

“Belle will be delighted,” she ventured in a sort of panic, fearing that if she stopped talking he would commence on that subject.

“Yes,” and he added with somewhat dreary levity, “she does not care about being ‘a subaltern’s poor thing.’” A long pause, during which their own footsteps on the baked, dry grass, was the only sound.

“I had a letter from Cuckoo last mail,” continued the girl, making a valiant effort to keep up the conversation; anything, anything, but this dead suggestive silence.

“Yes, and I had one from my mother. Denis is coming home. He cannot get any congenial employment, and he and Lizzie don’t seem to hit it off.”

“I am sorry to hear it, but these hasty marriages do not often turn out well.” She halted abruptly—her companion’s own marriage had been a hasty one—and then plunged into another subject.

“I saw you and uncle discussing something very serious this evening before dinner. When uncle nods his head, and walks with his hands behind him, I know he is talking of something interesting and important.”

“Yes, you are quite right. He was talking of you.”

“Of me?” with a sort of breathless gasp.

“He has got some wild idea that I have influence with you, and he asked me, as an old and entirely disinterested friend—not likely to have a woman’s love of match-making—to speak to you about Mr. Hammond.”

“To speak to me about Mr. Hammond! I am utterly sick of hearing about Mr. Hammond. Uncle, Mrs. Pope, Mrs. Calvert, can talk of nothing else.”

“He is not young, but he is not old,” continued George, “he is a remarkably able man, he will be in Council some day, he is an honourable upright gentleman. I quote your uncle’s words exactly, and your uncle, although he cannot bear to lose you, says that Hammond is his personal friend, and he does not wish to stand in the way of your making a good match, and he asked me to speak to you, as an old acquaintance, and to beg you to think it over. Think of your carriages, and diamonds, think of all the ladies old enough to be your mother, who must walk behind you into a room. Think.” They had now reached the tomb and were standing at its horse-shoe shaped entrance. He stopped abruptly, and leaning his shoulder against the wall behind him, looked hard at his companion.

“Does it not seem strange,” he went on in a totally altered voice, “that such a mission should be entrusted to me—of all men living?”

Betty affected not to notice the change in his manner, and said with her calmest air, and in a firm tone:

“I like Mr. Hammond immensely as a friend, but he is thirty years older than I am, and I do not choose——”

“To be an old man’s darling!” supplemented her companion sharply.

“No—I was going to say, change my estate. I am very happy as I am,” lifting her eyes from the moonlit plain, and looking straight and full at her questioner.

“Yet I don’t mind betting that before very long you will disappear from Mangobad amid a cloud of rice, and with the inevitable slipper on the top of the carriage. Proudfoot is not so ancient.”

Mr. Proudfoot was a handsome and superlatively conceited young man—(his conceit probably the result of an uncriticised career)—who played the banjo, and sang sweetly, and constantly assured his lady friends that he had been such a pretty boy. He paid Betty conspicuous attention, and was at this moment eagerly searching for her in every direction, but she and her companion were standing on the far side of the mosque steps, and its substantial walls were between them and the camp.

“Shall I tell you a secret?” said Betty suddenly.

“Do,” he returned with a slight start, but recovering himself instantly.

“I cannot endure the Golden Butterfly” (Mr. Proudfoot’s nickname).

“Why—what has he done? Has anyone told you anything?”

“He has told me everything himself,” she returned with a smile into the grave face beside her. “He dined with us, one evening; we had the Trotters to dinner too, and he confided to me, as we sat behind the piano, that when he was at home—I must try and quote his own words as you did uncle’s—he met Mrs. Trotter in the Park, and she came bustling up to him; ‘for the life of me,’ he said, ‘I could not remember her name, though I remembered her face and dinners, for when I was at that hole, Sonapore, she was there, and I used to be in and out a good deal. But by George! Sonapore is one place, and London is another, one does not come home to see one’s Indian friends, eh? I was not going to allow her to fasten herself on to me, and such a dowdy too! So I just took off my hat, and walked on—cut her so to speak, and now, she cuts me!’ What do you think of such a nice, grateful, gentlemanly young man?”

“I am not surprised—my opinion of him remains unchanged; but he still seems to find favour in your eyes—he sat beside you at dinner and appeared to make himself agreeable.”

“He bored me to death, about society at home, and his clubs.”

“Clubs! I don’t believe he ever belonged to one in his life, except a Mutton Club”—remarked Captain Holroyd scornfully. A ghurree in the camp now struck ten, and turning to her abruptly, he said in a voice that made her heart stand still:

“Betty, let us drop this hideous farce for five minutes, this Christmas night, and speak plainly to one another, face to face. I wonder that you look at me, much less talk and laugh with me, when I know what you think of me at the bottom of your heart. Wait”—seeing that she was about to speak—“I never was so astonished, as when I saw you on our own steps. I had not a suspicion that you were coming out. Had I known, I would have got an exchange; got leave, got anything, that would have taken me out of the station, and out of your sight, and you actually offered me your hand—but some women are angels!”

“I am no angel,” returned Betty almost inaudibly, “far from it. Do not let us speak of the past, it is done with, it is dead. There is no reason why we should not be friends.”

“Then, Betty,” he exclaimed, looking at her keenly, “you know?”

Betty did not speak; she turned away her face, and gazed over the great far-stretching landscape, bathed in moonlight; she saw nothing of its placid beauty, for her eyes were dimmed with tears.

“Answer me,” he insisted.

She bowed her head without looking towards him.

“Who told you?” he asked after an appreciable silence.

“Mrs. Redmond,” she replied in a choked voice. “She gave me your letter to her, before she died.”

“Betty, did I—did she—nearly break your heart?”

“It is all over now,” she returned in a low voice.

“Abominable old woman! As long as I draw breath I shall never forgive her.”

“Oh, George, do not say that; you must forgive her, you will forgive her. I have done so long ago. It is all over, and done with now, for ever.” As she spoke her sweet firm lips were set in a line that was almost stern.

“Over and done with for you—never over for me. But why should I expect you to care? the past, as you say, is dead, dead and buried. However, it is some comfort to me, to hear that you know that I was not a heartless scoundrel.”

“I never thought that,” she returned with a tremor in her voice.

“And I, miserable fool, never doubted a line of Mrs. Redmond’s letter. I accepted it all with unquestioning conviction. I knew that Moore was in love with you, and as you were lost to me I married Belle. Belle, who came out to be my wife in all good faith, believing that I loved her, and assuring me of her own attachment. She was your cousin. She was homeless and friendless in this country, and totally unsuspicious of her mother’s crime—for it was a crime—I could not send her back, shamed and slighted, to Ballingoole. I did what I believed any man of honour would do—I married her. I did not care what became of the rest of my life—and I gave it to her, no great gift!—and I honestly meant to make the best of things for her sake—but oh—my God—!” he exclaimed hoarsely—“if I had only known the truth!”

Betty listened, with white parted lips, and then said in a low voice: “And she must never know.”

“No—of course not. I am glad I had this chance of speaking to you at last, and thankful for what you tell me—to hear that you knew the truth—to know that you did not feel——”

“Not feel,” she echoed with a start, and a thrill in her voice. “George, I too will speak, just once—and never again. It cannot be wrong to tell you now—that it did nearly break my heart, it was so unexpected, so sudden, and I was—” she was about to add “so fond of you,” but looking into her companion’s penetrating dark eyes, she faltered—“I could tell no one—I had to bear it alone—no one knows—no one ever will know, only you and me! But I could not let you suppose that I did not feel—and, George, as it is all over now—as it was not to be—let us not be cowards.”

“No,” he interrupted fiercely. “Once I was going to shoot myself, but you see I thought better of it.”

“Let us not be cowards,” she repeated with quivering lips. “Let us make the very most of our lives, and try and make other people happy. When I hear of you doing something good and noble, that will be my happiness.”

Tears were very near the beautiful eyes, that looked with sad wistfulness into his.

“And when I hear of your marriage with some wealthy Civilian,” he sneered, “I suppose that is to be mine.”

“Oh! George,” she exclaimed, with two large tears now trickling down her face, “don’t talk in that way. It is not like you! You once told me that a man could be whatever he willed—man is man and master of his fate—you are still the master of yours.”

“My fate was too strong for me! Mrs. Redmond herself, like one of those ancient witches, cut it across with a pair of shears. It is not her fault, that I have not gone to the devil. I believe I shall get there yet.”

“No, you are only saying this to frighten me, and I am not afraid. You will make the best of your life. You will forgive and forget.”

“Never!”

“Yes—I know you better than you do yourself although you are so changed!” the last words came in a kind of sob.

“Changed!” he echoed with sudden compunction. “Yes, but not so changed as to behave like a brute to you! Forgive me, Betty—I will—I do—try to forgive, but I shall not try to forget. I will shake off, if I can, the sort of deadly paralysis that comes over me—I shall volunteer for our next little war. As for you, whatever good luck you have”—and he gulped down something in his throat—“no matter in what shape it comes—and whatever happiness may fall into your life—it will be good fortune and happiness for me. Betty, do you remember Juggy at the gate lodge? She said you had a lucky face! And I have a strong presentiment that you were not born to trouble, but that you have many bright days in store for you somewhere. As for myself——”

He paused, for Mr. Proudfoot, still searching, had suddenly turned the corner of the tomb, and stood within three yards of him. It was almost on that young man’s lips to say “I beg your pardon,” for Holroyd was as white as death, and Miss Redmond had been crying. Yes, she had actually her handkerchief in her hand, although she exclaimed, with wonderful composure, “Oh, Mr. Proudfoot, I am quite ready. I suppose uncle has sent you to look for me. I had no idea it was so late. I must go back at once,” and she hurried down the steps, accompanied by the two men. Half way to camp, they encountered Mr. Redmond, who called out in his loud, cheery voice:

“Well, Holroyd, what do you think of the tomb? Rather fine, is it not? They say it was built by Jahangir.” Holroyd muttered something inarticulate. Neither he nor Betty had cast one single glance at the object of their walk. They might as well have been standing beside a blank wall, for all the interest they had taken in this tomb, which was one of the sights of the district.

Betty went straight to her tent, and was seen no more that evening, and George departed from the camp at daybreak. The reason of this sudden move was explained by Mr. Proudfoot in the strictest confidence to some half-dozen listeners:

“Holroyd and Miss Redmond had had no end of a shindy, and he had walked into the thick of it behind the big tomb—no doubt that little devil Mrs. Holroyd had made some mischief between them.”