Interference

Between Bridgetstown and Noone lay Ballingoole, and the reasonable visiting distance of one Irish mile. Bridgetstown was a great, staring white house, with two low wings, that stood familiarly close to the road, although screened from the vulgar gaze by a high hedge of impenetrable laurels.

According to Major Malone, “the front of the house was at the back,” by which truly Irish statement, he meant that all the principal apartments opened south, into a delightful pleasure-ground, shaded by fine old trees, brilliant with flowers, and bounded by the grey walls of a celebrated garden. No one, driving up to the bleak and rather mean entrance, would believe that the mere act of walking across a hall could create such a total transformation of aspect. It was like passing from winter into summer, and exchanging the shores of the White Sea for the Mediterranean. The Bridgetstown pleasure-ground was a notorious sun-trap, the rendezvous of half the bees in the Barony, and the ruination of any delicate complexion. Flowers that drooped and died elsewhere, here blazed forth in flaunting profusion; invalid cuttings sprang to health at once, and the frail, fastidious, “Marechal Niel” and “Cloth of Gold,” draped the garden entrance as with a yellow mantle. Bridgetstown was a curious anomaly. The great white mansion was out of place by the roadside, and the pretty demesne that lay to the right of a long range of walls (enclosing grounds and stable-yards) looked empty and houseless. A noble avenue of limes ran parallel to the garden, and led to no place in particular, and everywhere in general. It seemed as if the house had had a violent quarrel with the park and avenue, and was on the point of quitting the premises. The farms belonging to the property were also scattered over the country in the most inconvenient directions, but Major Malone, in his high, red-wheeled dog-cart, made a virtue of inspecting them very frequently; his care-takers could have told another tale! When his credulous wife supposed him to be making a martyr of himself, and superintending ploughing, hay-making or threshing, he was generally attending some race or coursing meeting, or framing himself in the bow window of the Kildare Street Club.

Enough of the exterior of Bridgetstown. It is a raw November night; a penetrating drizzle is descending; let us go inside, and join the family at dinner.

A glance is sufficient to show that the house was built in the days when money was no object with the Malones, and when there was no struggling for cheap effect. The balustrades are carved oak; the doors solid mahogany; the marble chimneypieces works of Italian art; the furniture, plate, and china were all of the best of their kind, a hundred years ago. True, the china is now cracked; the plate somewhat battered; the mahogany a good deal scratched; the chintz and brocade faded; but nevertheless there is an air of respectability, a glimmer of the light of other days, lingering about the premises, that fails not to impress all strangers. The dining-room is large and lofty, papered with a dismal flock paper, the very touch of which thrills one to the tips of one’s finger nails; the three windows are decently draped in dark moreen curtains; a fine fire blazes up the chimney, in front of which blinks “Boozle,” a monstrous red tom cat, the dearly beloved protégé of Major Malone—a cat with a strong individuality, and considerable sporting rights as to rabbits and young game. Even the attractive aroma of a hot roast sirloin, does not entice him from the hearthrug—for he has eaten, and is filled with a prime young cock pheasant, and prefers his comfortable and contemplative attitude beside the fender.

The dinner table is square, and is lighted up with silver branch candlesticks; the forks and spoons are silver, too; also the dish covers, wine coolers, and flagons; the tumblers are real cut glass, and the china mostly old Worcester, though here and there eked out with a terrible blue and white Delft plate. There are no flowers to be seen, nor any attempt at table decoration, unless six rather greasy dinner mats come under that denomination. Mrs. Malone, who is head cook, chief butler, upper housemaid, and valet, has no time for such details, and in a family where the master is particular about his shirts, his boots, and, above all, his dinner, and there is a large house to be kept habitable, cows to milk, the door to answer, lamps, fires, and plate to be attended to, the mistress of but three servants must put her shoulder to the wheel. This mistress is a woman of about eight and forty, and looks much older. She is thin and colourless, and her faded fair hair displays a very wide parting; her blue eyes are timid to abjectness, her mouth has a pitiful droop, and her once pretty hands are coarse and scarred with manual labour; she wears a black (cotton) velvet body, and a large pink topaz brooch and earrings, in order to look smart in the eyes of her eldest son. Poor Lucy Holroyd! you thought you had taken a fresh lease of happiness when you married bluff, handsome, hearty Major Malone. Little did you guess that you were offering your slender shoulders to a pitiless old man of the sea. Major Malone is still bluff, but no longer either hearty or handsome; his head is bald, but he endeavours to disguise the miserable truth, by arranging an effeminately long lock round and round his bare poll, and affixing it thereto with bandoline—or, it may be, glue. Occasionally, in a high wind, or in a moment of intense agitation, this lock has been known to come down, and float wildly in the breeze, like a demented pigtail. To the Major “this lock is wondrous fair,” and his most cherished vanity, and he has the impudence to discourse of “bald old fogies” with contemptuous commiseration. He is dressed in evening clothes, with much care and precision; wears a flower in his button-hole, and a diamond in his shirt, and is altogether a superior being to his shabby wife and daughter. As he deftly carves the sirloin before him, we get an inkling of his true character. For whom are those three large slices from the undercut that he so artfully sets aside, to soak in the gravy? The remainder he apportions with an impartial hand, and when the undercut is finished, he turns over the joint, and helps his customers from the less toothsome portion, but he does not dream of sharing those three appetising morsels reserved for his own most particular palate, and it is thus with him always! Whoever goes short, it will not be Tom Malone. Number one must have the best of everything. Leaving him to enjoy his dinner, we pass on to his son Denis, a young man of four and twenty, who has not thought it worth while to make any change in his dress. Denis is undeniably plain; even his fond mother—who shuts her eyes to so many things—cannot close them to this fact. He has dark, wiry, unmanageable hair, deep-set grey eyes, heavy eyebrows, heavy features, a hopeful moustache, and huge ears that stand from his head like the handles of a jug. When we add that he has a large powerful frame, with hands and feet to correspond, that he slouches as he walks, and wears his hat on the back of his head, his portrait is complete. Denis is clever and has a fair share of brains; he is one of those birds “who can sing, and won’t sing.” Whilst others toil along the dreary road of learning, he can skim the ground with comparative ease. He has a taste for mathematics, a taste for surgery, a quick eye, a steady nerve, and a profound faith in Denis Malone; but he has a still greater taste for singing racy songs of his own composition, for playing “spoil five” and “poker,” and brewing whisky punch. However, in spite of his innate idleness and love of loafing and low company, his poor infatuated mother believes that he will be a credit to her yet. “Cuckoo,” his sister, is but fourteen; therefore we will hope that she may improve, and will not cruelly epitomise her features; suffice to say that she is pale, long-legged, and sandy, and characterised by extreme unreserve, and insatiable curiosity.

Miss Malone is her mother’s right hand, a first-rate household adjutant, but her father and brother’s pest; she acts as revising editor to all their best stories. She knows when Denis is at Nolan’s (the nearest public-house), instead of being, as the Major imagines, in bed with toothache. She knows why her mother hides the key of the cellarette, and why her father never opens, but angrily tears up, all communications in certain blue envelopes. In short, she is wise beyond her years. Opposite to Cuckoo sits George, the new arrival, in whose honour are the branch candlesticks, topaz ornaments, and dessert. He is a good-looking young man, with a broad forehead, a pair of very expressive eyes, and a carefully cultivated dark moustache, and, but that his aquiline nose is too large for his face (or it may be that his face is too thin for his nose) he would be remarkably handsome; well-favoured, well-dressed, and well-bred, he makes an effective Valentine to his brother’s Orson. In spite of his gallant efforts, conversation languishes; queries about hunting and shooting fall woefully flat; his relatives evince but a tepid interest in India, and his homeward voyage; to tell the truth the Major’s great mind is concentrated on his plate. Mrs. Malone’s thoughts are distracted by an alarming letter which she received from the family grocer as she came down to dinner, and Denis is wondering how his brother makes his tie, and if he will lend him twenty pounds. Cuckoo, who has the unintelligible desire to talk, common to her sex and years, converses affably for all, and keeps her unhappy mother on thorns, lest she should disclose too many domestic secrets. Having disposed of her pudding with startling rapidity, she said, as she scraped her plate:

“Mother made this plum pudding herself; she always makes the sweets now. Last Christmas, Eliza, the cook, was drunk; she sent the pudding up, stuck all over with lighted matches; it looked so funny; she drank the whisky! Once she got at father’s whisky, that he keeps——”

“There, that will do, Cuckoo,” said the Major, sharply. “Hold your tongue; I wish there was a fly blister on it.”

By the time the decanters were placed before him, the Major’s own tongue was loosened, and he proceeded to discuss the neighbourhood with considerable animation. Apropos of their own vicinity, he said: “Nothing but parsons and old women about here now, George! Great changes, you will hardly know any one in the parish. Eh! what? what?”

He usually concluded his sentence with this query, repeated as sharply as a postman’s knock.

“There are the Finnys and Miss Dopping,” said Mrs. Malone, “and the Wildes of Wildpark, and the Moores of Roskeen. I don’t think you know Mrs. Redmond. She came since you were here last. She has a daughter——”

“I should rather think she had a daughter,” interrupted the Major, rapturously. “There is not a handsomer girl between this and Dublin. Eh! what? what?”

“Girl!” echoed his wife peevishly. “I would scarcely call her a girl; she has been in every garrison town in——”

“Come, come, that will do!” exclaimed the Major rudely. “We all know you don’t like her. What handsome woman ever is appreciated by the old and ugly of her own sex? I only wish I was a young man for her sake,” and he gulped down a bumper of family port.

“I’d be sorry to be hanging since she was thirty,” muttered Denis, who generally sided with his mother.

“Mrs. Redmond is dreadful,” said Cuckoo, bravely, “she drawls out her words as if they cost money, and she is fearfully stingy and mean, she always comes here at meal-time on purpose.”

“Yes, she is a fine old soldier, and knows her way about,” admitted the Major. “She never wants much for the asking, from a plough to a pie dish, and she has a voice that would crack an egg. Eh! what?”

“She came here the other day,” continued Cuckoo, volubly; “mother was cooking, and could not see her, but she and Belle marched in, all the same, and said that they would wait for tea. We happened to have nice hot soda cakes, and Mrs. Redmond calmly took off her gloves and poured out tea, and ate three buttered cakes, and pressed them on Belle, just as if she was in her own house, and then said, ‘Cuckoo, as your mother has a headache, she cannot eat soda cakes; you have had as many as are good for you, and it is a pity to let them go downstairs, so I shall carry them off.’ And she actually made me do them up in paper, and took them home in her muff. Did you ever know such a greedy old thing?”

“I never knew her match,” growled Denis, in his deep voice. “The idea of making that unfortunate girl drag her about the country in a bath-chair the way she does; she ought to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. Betty is worth a thousand of Belle, with her airs and her eyes, and her humbug. Betty has no nonsense about her, and is as plucky as the devil.”

“And who is Betty?” enquired George.

“You might remember her in old Redmond’s time,” replied the Major. “A girl in short frocks, spending her holidays at Noone—a sort of poor relation. Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father was drowned, trying to save another man’s life. She is now a tall slip of a girl, that comes into a room like a blast of wind, and runs mad over the country, with her dogs and Cuckoo.”

“She is a beautiful, warm-hearted, young creature,” protested Mrs. Malone, with a tinge of colour in her pale face.

“Beautiful! Oh, Lord,” shouted the Major, derisively.

“And has two hundred a year of her own,” continued his wife——

“Which Mrs. Redmond saves her the trouble of spending,” supplemented Denis in his deep voice, “and makes her go all the messages, and weed the garden, and draw the bath-chair. She is warranted quiet in single harness, spirited but gentle—fine action, mouth, and manners.”

“Betty does not mind,” proclaimed Cuckoo; “she is never happy unless she is busy. George, I am sure you will like Betty.”

“At any rate, she is a pleasant contrast to Belle, who spends half her time in bed, reading novels. And has the devil’s own temper,” remarked Denis in his basso profundo.

“Hold your scurrilous tongue, sir,” bawled the Major. “What the deuce do you know about Miss Redmond?” Then to George, “She has a fine high spirit, which I must say I admire in a woman”—that is, in a woman outside of his own family—“she has been accustomed to the best society all her life, and to a great deal of attention, and dozens of admirers. She is very gay and lively, and finds it uncommonly slow at Noone. Poor girl, she says every week seems a year. I tell her if she wants to make the time fly, she has only to draw a bill at three months. Eh! what? what? She’s a deuced pretty creature, and, begad, she and I are uncommonly good friends.”

“She flatters father, that’s why he likes her,” explained the fearless Cuckoo, as her mother rose from table; and before the Major had time to launch some furious and fitting retort, Cuckoo was already giggling in the hall.

Bridgetstown was a house with long and windy passages, and Mrs. Malone and her daughter hurried into the drawing-room, whilst the men drew their chairs up to the dining-room fire. The Major lit a cigar, and began to talk “shop” (as a compliment to his step-son), reviving former memories of obsolete drill, and ancient mess anecdotes. George, on his part, assumed a polite interest in the recent autumn meetings and the odds on the Liverpool, and endeavoured to sympathise with the Major’s bitter disappointment in “the Blazeaway filly,” whom he had backed heavily at Fairyhouse races. Meanwhile Denis yawned, pulled Boozle’s tail (thereby causing Boozle to lash it about furiously) and, when his father was not looking, helped himself liberally to port. After the Major had related his favourite stock story, about a staff officer, a river and a chest of drawers, George and his brother joined their relatives in the drawing-room, whilst the elder gentleman adjourned to his own den, to his pipe, his sporting papers, and his betting-book. The drawing-room was cold and cheerless, despite a fire and lamps. Mrs. Malone rarely entered it, save to dust the ornaments, and superintend Cuckoo’s practising. In answer to her brother George’s request, Cuckoo seated herself before the grand piano with the utmost self-possession, and proceeded to perform a series of the most amazing exploits on the key-board. She thumped the instrument as though she had a spite against it—which she had—and clawed it like a cat. Meanwhile her two brothers stood near the fire and Mrs. Malone hemmed handkerchiefs close to a reading lamp. Once or twice she glanced furtively at the pair on the rug. Could they both be her sons? It seemed strange that that tall young man with his air of distinction, that courteous, scrupulously-dressed stranger, could be brother to Denis, with his round shoulders, wild hair, and rude ways. Their voices were widely different. Denis possessed a deep, uncultivated brogue and inherited his father’s bullying delivery. George spoke with a polished English accent. Their manners also were in strong contrast. George stood up when she entered a room, placed a chair for her, and listened to all she said with deferential attention. Denis contradicted her freely and frankly, and would as soon have thought of standing on his head, as of offering her a seat. She was his mother, and therefore of course devoted to him. It was her business to mend his clothes and his socks; fill his purse, and hide his scrapes; all this was her duty, and his——? Well, he offered her his cheek to kiss every morning, when he was at home, and wrote to her regularly—if he wanted money—when he was abroad. George resembled his father. Poignant, melancholy memories stole into her mind, as she watched him through misty eyes—memories long banished by heavy cares, and heavy bills, and selfish domestic tyranny. What a different life hers might have been, had George Holroyd lived!

Cuckoo, who had now brought her performance to a violent end, came over to the fire, and stared expectantly at her elder brother, with a half simpering, half impudent expression. “Thank you, Cuckoo,” he said with a dubious smile.

“Thank you for what?” she enquired with a giggle.

“Well, since you ask me, for leaving off.”

“I hate music!” thrusting her bony shoulders out of her frock.

“So I should imagine! Mother, won’t you sing something?”

At this suggestion Denis opened his mouth in amazement, and then burst into a loud and scornful guffaw.

“For goodness’ sake don’t ask the mater to sing; you don’t know her voice now; it’s like a cracked fog-horn.”

George turned sharply to his brother, with an angry light in his eyes, but Mrs. Malone interposed hastily:

“I never sing now; you forget that I am quite an old woman, my dear George,” and she smiled up into his face a pitiful smile.

But the little attention had pleased her; she had been a renowned singer in her day. What a pathetically sad little sentence that is to many a woman—“In her day.” How short is that day! How fleeting—how soon forgotten by all but herself!

“How nicely your clothes fit, George,” remarked his sister. “What a swell you are!” stroking his coat admiringly.

George made no reply: he could not return the compliment. Cuckoo’s shabby frock was nearly up to her knees, her shoes were white at the toes, and her pigtail was tied with a boot lace.

“We have never sat here since Aunt Julia was over, last spring,” continued Cuckoo, as she threw some turf on the fire.

“Oh, has she paid a visit here? I did not know.”

“I should rather think she has paid a visit—a visitation,” rejoined Denis, who was lolling with his hands in his pocket and his eyes half shut—an affectation of indolence being his best substitute for easy self-possession. “We thought we should have had to go away ourselves to get rid of her. We were afraid that she would be like the man who came with his carpet bag to stay from Saturday till Monday, and remained for twenty years.”

“She would have gone if she could,” retorted Cuckoo mysteriously; glancing at her mother who was holding a parley with some one at the door.

“What on earth do you mean? what was to prevent her?” enquired Denis; “the road was clear.”

“I won’t tell you, for you hate Aunt Julia, but I’ll tell George”—taking him firmly by the button-hole, and speaking in a whisper.

George rather mistrusted his gentle sister’s artless confidences, but there was no escape for him.

“She had no money for her journey; twice she had it sent over, and twice mother borrowed it, so she could not get away; she was here three months.”

“Nonsense, Cuckoo,” said her unwilling listener, drawing back; “you should not say such things.”

“What has she been telling you?” asked Mrs. Malone, rather anxiously, as she resumed her work.

“Only that we never sit here, mother, or have a fire in this room, or dessert, or coffee, or wine,” continued this pleasant child. “It’s all on account of you, George,” giving him a playful poke.

She was excessively proud of her handsome brother. Mrs. Malone reddened to her liberal parting, and fidgeted uneasily on her chair, and George said:

“Surely, mother, you are not going to make a stranger of me?”

“The fatted calf for the prodigal son! Eh! What? What?” said Denis, mimicking his father, with a loud unmeaning laugh.

“Prodigal son!” screamed Cuckoo. “That’s yourself. Do you know the last time he came home, George, he walked the whole way from Dublin; he was nearly barefoot, and he had pawned——”

“Cuckoo!” exclaimed her mother authoritatively, “go and see if the passage door is shut; now go at once.”

Cuckoo and Denis collided in the doorway, and left the room together; and presently voices in angry recrimination, and the sound of a hearty smack, and loud sobs, were heard in the hall; then a slamming of doors, a roar from the Major’s study, and silence.