Interference

Her eldest son’s generous cheque had lifted a heavy load of care from Mrs. Malone’s bowed shoulders. She had caulked and repaired her sinking credit, with various gratifying sums “on account,” and although the Major bullied her out of one hundred pounds, and Denis blarneyed away twenty more, yet she contrived to pay the most pressing village bills and the servants’ wages, and to purchase some much-needed garments for Cuckoo and herself. In a new bonnet and gown, she was a comparatively happy woman, when she carried her soldier son round to call on the neighbourhood—on the Mahons of the Glen, the Lynches of Newton-Girly, the Moores of Roskeen, Miss Dopping and the Finnys. Mrs. Finny—who was as much too sweet as her daughter was the reverse—clasped her bony hands, ecstatically, in Mrs. Malone’s face, as she welcomed her, and brought a tinge of red into George Holroyd’s tanned cheek, by saying: “So good of you, my dear, kind friend, to bring your handsome son to see us.”

Mrs. Malone’s handsome son needed no introduction to Noone, and was perfectly competent to find his way there alone! He had received several cups of tea from the fair hands of Belle—little did he suspect the claws that were at the end of those soft, white fingers—how should he? Belle was on her best, her very best behaviour—and he had lunched there once, in company with Denis, on rabbit pie, bottled gooseberries, and rhubarb wine—yet lived to tell the tale! but on no occasion had he come across the girl who had wheeled the bath-chair. Nor, to be perfectly frank, did he miss her.

After a long morning’s tramp over bogs and marshes, the dark November afternoons were somewhat difficult to dispose of (a late dinner has its draw-backs), and it was not altogether unpleasant to stroll across to Noone, and sit over its drawing-room fire, with a brilliant companion, who always remembered that he took no sugar, and very little cream; sang tender love songs, and sparkling French chansons, with considerable expression; told amusing anecdotes with much vivacity and gesticulation, and enrolled him in a kind of delightful, confidential, companionship.

They knew so many mutual military acquaintances, and military stations, and both were aliens to this monotonous rural existence. Belle was vivacious in appreciative company, related malicious tales of her neighbours, flattered him discreetly about his singing and shooting, and told him, with a sigh, that he reminded her so forcibly of a very great friend of hers, who, she subsequently let fall, was as handsome as a god!—and yet people said that Belle was not clever and that Betty had ten times her brains. Whilst this merry young couple laughed and talked and sang, Mrs. Redmond dozed over her knitting, or woke up with a start, to gaze at the animated faces at the tea table, and to watch George Holroyd furtively, with a cunning, predatory glance out of her little yellowish eyes. Would anything come of this? she wondered. She was desperately anxious about her daughter’s future. At her death Noone reverted to another branch of the family, and her beautiful, helpless, hot-tempered Belle would be left to face the world with a very scanty income. Her own life, she knew, could not be prolonged. She was in the deadly grip of a fatal malady, and if she could only see Belle well married, she would die happy and with her mind at rest, but Belle was “getting on,” and was, alas! still Miss Redmond. And she bent all her energies to screwing and scraping every spare halfpenny, in order to leave her daughter a better provision when she herself had passed away. Now and then, she had reluctantly fitted her out for a short campaign in England, for a tour of what proved to be barren visits, remaining herself at Noone, to count the potatoes and sods of turf, and to subsist on rabbits and herrings. The mere act of putting by one sovereign after another, soon became her keenest pleasure, and the enjoyment grew stronger the more it was indulged in, though she always assured herself that this feverish gathering in of shillings and pound notes had nothing to do with a love of money, but solely with her love of Belle! Belle herself had no anxieties about her future. She had made up her mind to marry George Holroyd and accompany him to India—her promised land. She was a young woman of some decision where her own interests were concerned, and possessed a considerable fund of tenacity—in spite of which several of her admirers had detached themselves, and escaped;—and, although she was by no means in love with her new acquaintance, she was enamoured of his profession and his prospects, and her restless spirit yearned for the perpetual changes of scene insured to an officer’s wife. Visions of gay cantonments, and still gayer hill stations, rose before her mental eye—visions in which she saw herself living in a whirl of balls, theatricals, and picnics, the queen of society, the best-looking, best dressed, and most admired of her sex; with legions of generals, aide-de-camps, yea, and commissioners, figuratively, at her feet. With each visit George paid, these dreams assumed more real and brilliant hues. Woe, woe, be to the hand that would dispel them, and condemn her to damp dreary Noone, and the society of the Finnys, and Malones, for life—a life that to Belle, with her intense vitality, and quenchless craving for excitement, would be simply a living death!

George Holroyd was really quite amazed to find what rapid strides he had made in intimacy with the Redmonds. We know how easily the great leviathan may be led, when once a hook is in his nose! and how simple it is for any idle young man to become entangled in the web of a pretty and experienced flirt. He began to feel almost apologetic and uncomfortable, when his mother regularly enquired at dinner “where he had been?”

And he replied as punctually: “Over to Noone,” or, “I just looked in at Noone,” “I had tea at Noone.”

Cuckoo’s ill-bred titter, and Denis’s wink, were not lost upon him, much less the Major’s ponderous chaff, and constant regret that “he was not a young man, for Belle Redmond’s sake.” Belle was a pleasant companion for an hour or so, but George was not thinking of her as a companion for life.

He had discovered that she was a young lady that one came to the end of very soon. She was smart, sparkling and pretty; her animated gestures, and the playful little stamp of her foot, were all very taking in their way; but she was shallow, restless, and spiteful, and had a singularly foolish laugh. True that to him she was undeniably sweet—sweet as Turkish delight—but then, with most people, a little of that cloying dainty goes a long way.

In his guilty heart, this miserable young man knew that he was daily expected to tea at Noone; that he already had his own particular chair, and tea cup, and that he had given Belle a quantity of new songs, a belt of his regimental colours, and his photograph in two positions; but surely, he would argue with himself, she was a sensible girl, and too well accustomed to society and the ways of the world, to suppose that these were more than the most ordinary attentions, and, then, Mrs. Redmond had been very civil to him, and given him “carte blanche” to come and shoot rabbits whenever he pleased. Crafty old person! She sold the rabbits in the town for sevenpence apiece, or hung them in the larder, and saved her butcher’s bill.

To tell the truth, she and Mrs. Maccabe, the butcher’s relict and successor in the business, were not on very friendly terms. If the Malones’ bills were alarmingly long, Mrs. Redmond’s were pitifully small.

“A pound and a half of neck chops, is it, ma’am?” Mrs. Maccabe would scream. “No, ma’am, not to-day; you’ve had chops for the last three months. I suppose ye think the shape is made of chops, but let me inform you, ma’am, that you are under a mistake. Shape has legs and loins, and fore-quarters; you can take one of them, or go without.”

And then Mrs. Maccabe, a powerful, formidable matron, in a large black bonnet, would seize an ox tail, kept for the purpose, and lay about her vigorously among the listening, sniggering street urchins, whilst Mrs. Redmond would stalk back majestically to her bath-chair—and subsequently send a pencilled order for a sheep’s head. Mrs. Maccabe was an authority in the town; even her grown-up married sons quailed before her tongue and her ox tail, and Maria Finny (herself a fearless speaker) stood in respectful awe of the butcher’s widow.

“One day,” to quote that championess, who related the story with virtuous complacency, “she made a holy show of Miss Finny before the whole street.” Maria, on frugal thoughts intent, had stepped in to remonstrate about a bit of gristle which she produced carefully wrapped in paper. “Av course, I know that to please some people bastes must be made without skin, and sinews and bone. Weigh it, Sam!” shouted Mrs. Maccabe to her son. “One ounce. Cut Miss Maria an ounce of mate!”

“There, miss,” solemnly presenting it in paper, “I daresay it will serve you for a dinner.”

Maria flung the packet into the middle of the street, and followed it in a fury, whilst her opponent placed her hands upon her fat sides and shook with wheezy laughter.

The widow had her good points, of course, or she would have had but few customers, on whom to sharpen her terrible tongue. Indeed her poorer patrons did not care a straw for her abuse, and paid her honestly in her own coin, with ruthless and ready answers. She was most charitable in secret, and many a fine chop and steak, and many a strong bowl of broth, was given away quite on the sly. She was long-suffering to those who were really badly off, a devout Catholic, and a liberal contributor to her own Church: besides this, her meat was prime—unsurpassed in the whole province—and no better judge of a beast ever stood in a fair than Bridget Maccabe. As the poor innocent animals passed unconsciously before her, she could tell to a pound how they would cut up! Her purchases were young, healthy, and well-fed; she scorned to deal in tough old, milch cows, and skinny strippers, and boasted that no second-class joint ever hung beneath the sign of “B. Maccabe and Sons.”

During the days in which George Holroyd had developed so brisk an acquaintance with Noone, he had never once come across Betty Redmond. She was not kept out of his way in the upper or lower regions (as might be suspected), in case her claims to attention should clash with those of her cousin. Oh dear, no! Belle had no sincerer admirer. Betty was her willing drudge: she sewed for her, brought her breakfast in bed, and ran her errands with alacrity, Belle accepting these services with smiling thanks, and honeyed speeches. Her cheap fascinations secured for her a devoted attendant, and saved her a lady’s-maid.

Betty, who had known Ballingoole, and everyone in the neighbourhood, all her life, was quite at home in comparison with Mrs. Redmond and her daughter. She spent her holidays there, and looked forward to her visits to Noone, as if she were going direct to an earthly paradise. She loved the country, whether in summer or winter. She loved old “Playboy,” the bay hunter who had taught her to ride, and now lay buried at the end of the orchard. She was fond of the dogs, the cart horses, the very cows.

She was also fond, in a way, of old Uncle Brian, with his goggle eyes, red face, and loud voice, but here her love was somewhat tempered by fear. He set her on horseback when she was seven years old, and flogged old “Playboy,” over big fences, in order to teach her to ride like an Irishwoman, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, when the chestnut filly kicked her off in the lawn, and went away with the best half of her habit. He took her out with him when he went snipe shooting, to make her active and hardy; nor dare she flinch, before the deepest, blackest bog-drain, and he taught her to play backgammon and cribbage, and swore at her roundly if she made a mistake. “To be afraid of nothing, to speak the truth, and to pull up her stockings,” were the injunctions which he enforced on his grand-niece. He left other matters to her instructors at the English school.

When Betty was sixteen, her Uncle Brian died quite suddenly of apoplexy, said to have been induced by a fit of furious passion, and when she returned to Noone, her heart sank within her, for a new mistress was coming, and she expected great changes. The new mistress was an Englishwoman, with a pretty daughter, and both were total strangers to Ballingoole and Betty.

Betty went mournfully round the place in her new black dress, accompanied by her intimate friends, “Brown,” “Jones,” and “Robinson.” There had been an auction of all the stock and out-door effects; the yard was full of straw, and bits of boxes and newspapers; the stables, byre, and coach house were empty; the house itself, how dreary and forlorn; at every turn she missed old Uncle Brian, with his loud voice and tapping stick, and was very miserable indeed, till Miss Dopping came that afternoon, and carried her away to her own home, and subsequently to visit the Moores of Roskeen.

A week or two later, Mrs. Redmond arrived, inquisitive, astute, agreeable—prepared to tolerate Betty, and to tolerate the dogs—and to make a little money out of both!

But Betty was a delightful surprise; a bright, clever, active girl, full of good humour and energy, who knew the ways of the place, and was most useful in the house, and took to Belle—and, what was more important, Belle took to her—immediately.

Far from being set on one side, Betty was an influential personage, and her aunt’s domestic viceroy and right hand. She had not been visible at the tea-table, simply because she never partook of afternoon tea. Her Uncle Brian had called it “a kitchen-maid’s custom,” and she liked being out of doors until it was almost dark. At present she spent all her afternoons with Miss Dopping, who had been laid up with a bad cold ever since her visit to Noone, and Mrs. Redmond gladly spared her niece, for two reasons; firstly, because she did not want her; secondly, because she had her weather-eye fixed on Miss Dopping’s money bags. The old lady was fond of Betty, was as wealthy as she was eccentric, and had no near kin. If Betty became a rich heiress, it would be a capital thing for Belle!