Interference

The town of Ballingoole has always awakened a certain amount of respectful surprise in the minds of strangers; it is so amazingly unlike its name! According to tourists who wish to pay it an extravagant compliment, it actually recalls a fine old English village, and, indeed, in its palmy days, Ballingoole would not have considered itself at all flattered by the comparison. Fifty years ago it was the stronghold of one of the most rigidly exclusive circles in the south of Ireland.

The wide hilly street was lined by noble and imposing residences, that looked as if they had quitted country parks and pleasure grounds, and flocked together for company; liberally planned gardens—celebrated for fruit and roses—sloped away from French windows at the rear of these mansions, to the very brink of a slow, brown canal—once glorified by fly boats, galloping teams and gay passengers, but now abandoned to lethargic barges, bearing freights of turf and manure. In the good old days the town was peopled by retired officers (naval and military), wealthy widows, and well-born spinsters, and actually numbered a baronet, and the brother of a viscount among its tenants.

There was an extensive collection of the best society in Ballingoole in former times; whist parties—concluding with very potent negus, goloshes and lanterns—substantial dinners, with weighty joints, strawberry fêtes, and hunt breakfasts, were of common occurrence. To tell the truth, “the town” was somewhat exclusive, and secretly turned up its nose at most of the county folk; but now, alas! times were changed, and the county turned up its nose at the town.

As years went on, ancient inhabitants who remembered the illuminations after Waterloo, and told anecdotes of George the Fourth, had been gradually gathered to their family vaults, and there was no inducement for other gentry to take their places. Some of the finest houses were let in tenements, and displayed small washings fluttering from upper windows. Several stood empty, with rusty area-railings, and shattered panes. Over the late abode of a baronet, hung three weather-beaten golden balls, and the mansion in which Mrs. General Moriarty once held her famous routs and card parties, thinks itself very lucky to be no worse than the police barrack!

Yes, the big houses now merge into shops, the shops into one-storeyed cottages, and the cottages into squat mud hovels, at the foot of the hill, down which Ballingoole has been going in more ways than one, for many years past. At the head of the street, two residences are still let to genteel tenants. Mrs. Finny, a doctor’s widow, and her daughter; and Miss Dopping, an eccentric old maid, occupy the best houses in the place, for the traditional old song. This is a consideration with Mrs. Finny, a lady with a limited income; but Miss Dopping is rich, and could afford herself a house in Park Lane, if so disposed. She is the last of her family, the sole legatee of more than one comfortable fortune, but no one would suppose it from her appearance, as she stalks down the street, tall, gaunt and shabby. Although upwards of seventy years of age, she is as erect as a lamp-post, having been reared in the great back-board period; and, despite her rusty black bonnet, frieze cloak, and ridiculous purple woollen gloves, there is no mistaking her for anything but a lady.

It was a soft November afternoon; the hedges were not yet quite bare; the haws—signs of a hard winter—clustered in thick red bunches, and yellow leaves, from overhanging beeches, fluttered reluctantly into the muddy road. There was not a sound to be heard in this still country spot, save the distant rattle of an ass’s car, and the clump of Miss Dopping’s umbrella, as she trudged along a foot-path, but few degrees drier than the highway, en route to pay her quarterly visit of ceremony, to her neighbour, Mrs. Redmond of Noone.

Another half mile of the greasy foot-path, and a lofty wall, topped with firs, comes into view, also a pair of big iron gates (once green), also a winding avenue—which is very green indeed—lined with dripping trees and over-grown laurels. In answer to a scream of “gate” in Miss Dopping’s cracked falsetto, a fat old woman, with a shawl over her head and a key on her finger, came waddling out of the lodge, and said as she curtseyed profoundly:

“Good evening to you, me lady—a fine, soft day.”

“And how are you, Juggy?” enquired Miss Dopping, with a keen glance into Juggy’s round, red face.

“Faix, but poorly, me lady. I have had a cruel turn of them rheumatics; they catches me here, and here, and here”—clutching her elbows, back and knees, to illustrate her sufferings. “I feel as if I was being crucified, like the saints and martyrs, but a good flannel petticoat would put the life in me,” and she stared significantly at her interlocutor.

“It’s only the damp weather—I feel it myself,” returned Miss Dopping unsympathetically. “Any one above?” pointing up the avenue with her notable umbrella—an immense alpaca construction of distended proportions, likewise remarkable for a huge ivory handle, representing Death’s head. When remonstrated with upon the subject of its size and age, its owner invariably replied:

“It was good enough for my mother, and is good enough for me, and will wear out fifty of your nasty flimsy gimcracks.”

“Yes, me lady, I am afther opening the gate for Mrs. Finny and Miss Maria.”

Miss Dopping ejaculated something inaudible, and looked over her shoulder, as if she had a mind to retreat.

“You may as well go up, ma’am,” urged Juggy, possibly divining her thoughts, “since you are so far. They are in it a good hour or more, and bid to be going soon, for there’s no tay, or cake and wine offered these times!”

“Now what are they doing out here?” muttered the old lady to herself, as she plodded up the avenue. “They were here three days ago to my certain knowledge.”

“Oh! so that’s you, Pat?” to a shock-haired urchin, with bare red legs, who burst though the laurels, with a grin of expectation on his dirty little keen face.

“Let me see,” diving into her pocket as she spoke, “were you at school to-day?”

“Begorra, I was, ma’am.”

“Then spell Ballingoole?”

Pat became painfully red, and his grin faded.

“Well, well, then never mind,” producing a little knitted jug, containing coppers, and placing three pennies in his ready palm—

“Have you been out dark fowling since?”

“No, ma’am,” was his reply,—but he lied unto her.

“Because if you ever do such a cruel thing again, as blazing lanterns into poor birds’ eyes, and knocking them down with sticks, you have seen the last of my coppers, as sure as my name is Sarah Dopping; so mind that,” and with an emphatic thump of her umbrella, she tramped on.

The avenue at Noone was not imposingly long, and in a few minutes Miss Dopping had turned the corner, and was almost at the hall door.

Noone House was a straggling building, with no pretensions to beauty, dignity, or even antiquity—merely a big, grey mansion, with three rows of windows, and a glass porch, overlooking a low flat demesne, fringed with rows of dreary fir-trees. The back of Noone was flanked by a fine, old, seasoned garden, and many acres of worthless woods, which swarmed with rabbits. The land was poor and marshy—not to say boggy—neither useful nor ornamental, and the rabbits were an important item in Mrs. Redmond’s income. She was the widow of an idle Irish gentleman, with a magnificent pedigree and a meagre fortune, who had departed this life, leaving her two hundred a year and one fair daughter—and she had endeavoured to make the most of both. At eighteen, Isabel Redmond was a remarkably handsome girl, the cynosure of many eyes, as she and her mother paraded about in showy costumes, to the strains of a seaside band. She was unusually lively: she could sing pretty little French songs, and act and dance in a sprightly manner, and was taken up, and asked about, by discriminating matrons—with no unmarried daughters—and more than once had been upon the brink of an enviable match. Mrs. Redmond was ambitious, and her anticipations in the shape of a son-in-law modestly stopped just short of royalty. She strained every nerve—and she was an energetic woman—to dress her idol with fitting display, and to carry her into the most popular haunts of men (eligible men). Garrison towns, where cavalry were quartered, French watering places, and German spas, affected by rich and gouty bachelors, were visited in turn by Mrs. and Miss Redmond. These visits were brilliant, if brief; they generally made some gay, agreeable acquaintances—“birds of passage” like themselves, who voted them charming, and loudly regretted their departure—as did also their too trustful tradespeople, for Mrs. Redmond had a bad memory for small bills. She was an indefatigable chaperon, the most industrious and intriguing of her sex; and no galley slave, toiling at his oar, under the blazing Mediterranean sun, worked harder than she did at the business—the vital business—of keeping up appearances, and “getting Isabella settled.”

To say that the army list, the county families, and the peerage, were at her fingers’ ends, may give some faint idea of her reading. As to writing, she was an untiring scribe, and deservedly merited a private secretary; corresponding with important acquaintances, with distant, aged, and wealthy connections, plying all with graceful, flattering letters, ditto photographs of Belle, and expensive Christmas cards; snatching ravenously at vague invitations; following up marching regiments, and anxiously courting the female relatives of rich young men. After ten years of knocking about Vanity Fair, the most pushing and plausible of vendors, her wares were no longer in their first freshness, and alas! still unsold; for Miss Isabel, though beautiful, was said to have a cold heart, a hot temper, and a head as empty as her purse. Connections had died, and made no sign. Correspondents were dumb; promising partners of Belle’s had revoked miserably and fled; fine acquaintances averted their eyes from what they considered a shabby old sponge, with a passée daughter, and the poor-house loomed immediately in her foreground. Mrs. Redmond was at the end of her credit and resources, and struggling in an angry sea of debt, when Providence threw her a plank. Old Brian Redmond, one of her many irons in the fire, having quarrelled with all his near relatives, departed this life, leaving (to spite the proverbially hated heir-at-law) Noone House and lands “to the pleasant widow woman with the pretty daughter”—whom by the way he had never seen.

Joy! Joy! one of the widow woman’s many sprats had caught a salmon at last!

Naturally she was enchanted at her good fortune, but—there is always a but. The bequest was in Ireland, the best country in the world to live out of, in her opinion, and she was obliged to agree to two stipulations before she could call Noone her own. In the first place, she must guarantee to reside on the premises, and, secondly, she must share her home with, and be “a mother” to, Brian Redmond’s orphan grand-niece—a relative to whom he bequeathed a legacy of two hundred pounds a year. If Mrs. Redmond objected to these clauses, she had the remedy in her own hands, and Noone passed on to another remote connection, one of the Redmonds of Ballyredmond—a childless, rich, old man. Mrs. Redmond hated the conditions of the will, but she was socially and financially bankrupt; better to exist in Ireland, than to starve in England; her health was bad, her energy abated, and after wearying the inmates of a cheap London boarding-house, with pompous boastings of “my place in Ireland,” “my shooting,” “my Irish property,” went over, and entered into her kingdom, with a curious mixture of satisfaction and disgust. She had now been residing on her own acres for three years, saving and scraping with extraordinary enjoyment, ignoring ancient debts, and discovering a fresh and novel interest in leasing the rabbit warrens, selling fruit, fowl and turf, keeping few servants, no equipages, and finding her excitements in small country gossip, feuds with the butcher, and startling domestic economies. There was also old Brian’s other legacy—Elizabeth, or Betty, Redmond, with her two hundred pounds a year, which her self-styled “Aunt” coolly appropriated for her board and lodging, having removed her from school when she was seventeen years of age, believing that she could find a more excellent use at home for Betty and her money—in which belief the astute old lady was subsequently most fully justified. But enough of the inmates of Noone. For all this time we are keeping Miss Dopping shivering on its hall door steps. At first she rang gently, but firmly. After a pause, firmly, but not gently. Finally, a wild passionate peal; and then the distant slamming of doors, and a heavy deliberate footfall came in answer to her summons.

Miss Dopping was unmistakably put out, because there had been a delay in letting her in, and when the servant volunteered to part her and her umbrella, she was, to say the least of it, a little short in her manner. The old lady was presently ushered into a drawing-room, cold as a vault. From an adjoining apartment, the babble of female tongues and shrill laughter was distinctly audible; in a few minutes she was requested to “step into the study,” and here she discovered Mrs. and Miss Redmond, and Mrs. and Miss Finny, disposed in four arm-chairs, round a comfortable turf fire.