Interference

“A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse.”

“Miss Dopping’s cold had taken a terrible strong hold of her,” according to the maid who issued bulletins at her hall door, and she sat cowering over the fire in what she called her “museum,” wrapped in a woollen shawl, munching liquorice ball, and reminding herself that she was seventy-five years of age, and could not expect to live for ever!

Each afternoon Betty had appeared, escorted by her dogs, all brisk and cheerful, and, whilst Brown ate biscuits, and Jones conscientiously drew the room for mice, Betty read aloud, wound worsted, answered letters, and amused her; but to-day, thanks to Jones’s misadventure, there was no Betty, and the old lady was feeling unusually low and forlorn. Her drawing-room (or museum) was a strange apartment for an elderly spinster. If you were told that it was the sanctum of a sporting squire, you would not have been surprised, for it was essentially a man’s room, from the tanned skins of defunct hunters spread about the floor, the walls covered with brushes, horse shoes, and sporting prints (prints setting forth slender-waisted riders, charging impossible rails on short-tailed thoroughbreds, or spanking coaches-and-four, or flat races) to the venerable old fox-hound, dozing on the rug.

Miss Sally Dopping came of a very horsey family, and had ruled her father’s sporting establishment for many years; but he had been cut off by a coaching accident, and her only brother had broken his neck in a steeplechase. The Doppings generally met their deaths by flood or field; a natural death in a four-poster would be an unnatural death to them. Miss Sally herself had followed the hounds with reckless persistence, in a black skirt and scarlet jacket; delighting the male sex, and horrifying their wives and daughters, for a fox-hunting lady was not a common or popular spectacle fifty years ago; but Miss Sally did not care a button for the local Mrs. Grundy. She swallowed a bowl of strong broth at eight o’clock in the morning, and set off on her well-bred, rat-tailed hunter, to the nearest meet, and enjoyed herself vastly. She paid ceremonious visits to her neighbours, in her mother’s old green chariot, and was quite as stiff and snubby to them as they were to her. Indeed, to tell the truth, they were all afraid to say much to her face—and she feared no one—for Sally had the reputation of having a high temper, and, it was whispered, had once boxed another lady’s ears. She was an old woman now, who had out-lived her generation and her relations, and was never known to lift her hand to mortal, merely contenting herself with speaking her mind quite plainly, and going her own way. There were no traces of “Galloping Sal” in the wealthy old maid, beyond that she was still an excellent judge of a horse, and had been known, under strong provocation, to rap out a full-bodied oath. Despite her eccentricities (which were not a few—she used a toothpick, rarely wore a cap, and had been seen sitting with her feet on the chimneypiece), she was very popular among the county people, and in great request at their hospitable houses, and took a far higher social position than miserly Mrs. Redmond, or meek Mrs. Malone, even although she lived in the town! People said that she and old Brian Redmond had been lovers once, but that they had fallen out over a horse, and that that was the reason of her strong partiality for Betty; but some people will say anything.

“Was that Betty’s knock?” she said to herself.

No, “Bachelor” never growled at Betty’s step! It was Maria Finny in a damp waterproof, who, noting from over her blind that Miss Dopping’s daily visitor had failed her, ran over to see how she was getting on?

“Oh, well, I am just getting on like all of us. You are getting on yourself, Maria.”

“Yes,” she admitted, as she removed her cloak, and drew near the fire. “But I am not getting on like Belle Redmond. I should be sorry to be a town’s talk like her.”

“The town is always ready to talk. I’ve a mind to buy a flaxen wig and a pair of pink tights, and give it something to gabble about in earnest. Well, and what has Belle been doing now?”

“She has that young Holroyd there every day of his life,” returned Maria, who, having a budget of news, was speechfully happy.

“Pooh, what rubbish; he has only been here ten days, and, may be, he has nowhere else to go to—or perhaps you expect him to hang up his hat in your hall, Maria.”

“No, Miss Dopping, you know I do not, but he is a nice gentlemanly young man, and, surely to goodness, you would not like to see him ruined for life! He has been very liberal to his mother. She was down the street paying bills a few days after he came. I saw her myself, going into Maccabe’s and Casey’s, and she has not faced them for months.”

“Then why the deuce doesn’t she look after her son? What is the fool of a woman about? If he marries, she has seen the last of his money, and most likely the last of him.”

“And don’t you know Mrs. Malone by this time?” enquired Maria contemptuously—“a poor helpless creature, all her mind is set on making things pleasant for Mr. Holroyd, keeping him and the Major on good terms, and hiding Denis and his doings from them both.”

“Will you tell me one thing, Maria Finny—you know what goes on in the town, if any one does. Since I am confined to the house, I am a good deal at the window.”

“You always are,” interrupted Maria, with her usual acid frankness. Maria neither gave nor accepted quarter. “The song—‘Only a Face at the Window,’ was surely made about you.”

“Tell me, Maria, what is Denis doing in Maccabe’s? He is in and out there like a dog in a fair. If it was a public, I could understand it, but butchers’ meat throws me fairly off the scent.”

“Off the scent, are you? And hasn’t Mrs. Maccabe more than beef and mutton in her shop? Hasn’t she a pretty niece?”

“Nonsense, Maria! hold your blistering, scurrilous tongue,” said the old lady, pushing her chair back, with great violence.

“Tongue, or no tongue, I’ve an eye in my head,” returned Maria undauntedly. “Lizzie is one of your still waters, with her sleek hair, and downcast eyes, and ‘yes, Miss Finny,’ and ‘no, Miss Finny’—scarcely above her breath. She is as deep as a draw-well. I saw Denis and her walking together in the bog road last Sunday.”

“Then, by my oath, if her aunt knew it, she would just flay her alive,” said Miss Dopping, excitedly.

“I daresay she would! But never mind Lizzie just now; trust me, there will be enough about her by and by, or I am much mistaken. Do you know that the Major is going on with his tricks, and his betting, worse than ever? Jane Bolland says that he sends as many as six telegrams a day—and always about racing. There will be a fine ruction there soon, and George Holroyd will have to support the whole family. If he marries Belle Redmond, he will have his hands full. When she is in a passion, she is like a madwoman; she threw a lighted candle at Katey Brady, they say, for spoiling a petticoat, and indeed I think there must be a touch of madness in the family. She is so restless, and fond of gay colours, and has the eyes and laugh of a woman who would go out of her mind for very little. I pity George Holroyd.”

“He will never marry her, Maria,” rejoined Miss Dopping emphatically.

“She will marry him, and it comes to the same thing,” returned Maria, with great determination. “They have a fire in the drawing-room every day, and she wears her best clothes, and walks back with him through the woods with a shawl over her head, leaning on his arm too! and is always sending him notes by Foxy Joe. I went over there myself one day, with a collecting card; of course that was a fool’s errand! but I wanted to see how the land lay, and indeed,” with a sniff of virtuous scorn, “I saw enough! I wonder if Mr. Holroyd knows about that officer in the Sky Blues!”

“Not he,” replied Miss Dopping in her sharpest key. “If he must take a wife from Noone, why does he not take Betty?”

“Betty! that wild slip, running about the country with Cuckoo, after every old fern, and fossil?”

“And is it not more respectable than to be running after a young man?” enquired the other forcibly. “She is eighteen, she is well educated, and she really is a lady.”

“She is only an awkward slip of a girl; her eyes and hair are not too bad, but I call her very plain, with her thin cheeks and pasty face.”

“Plain!” echoed Miss Dopping, shrilly.

“Yes, and what else?” retorted Maria, stoutly.

“Just listen to me, Maria. Old Robert Lynch, who was a terrible man for the ladies in his day, and the best of judges, saw her once, and said that in a year or two, she will be able to give two stone and a beating to any girl in the country. He said he would keep his eye on her.”

“I would not doubt him, the old scamp! Bob Lynch ought to be thinking of his sins, and of his latter end, instead of talking trash,” said Maria, severely. “However, Betty is not out yet.”

“And when she does come out,” retorted her champion, “you’ll find there will be a half-a-dozen young men waiting on the steps to marry her—and so George is at Noone every day?”

“Yes, for hours,” replied Miss Finny, in a tone that was almost tragic.

“Well, I see only two chances for him—and they are either to break his neck, or to run away from that scheming, brazen creature.”

“I know he is asked to Goole for the cock shooting, and to the Kanes’ for hunting,” continued Maria confidentially, “for Jane Bolland noticed the postmarks and crests. It is a grand thing for a young man to come into this part of the world, where bachelors are scarce and girls are in dozens. Mrs. Malone showed me a whole row of notes, waiting for him on the chimneypiece, and really, the first Sunday he was in church, the way the girls flocked round him afterwards—by the way of speaking to his mother—was shameless! The Rodes, the Lynches, and the Wildes, that scarcely look at her from year’s end to year’s end.”

“Why does he not go off hunting?” enquired Miss Dopping. “He must be a queer sort of a molly-coddle of a young man, if that does not tempt him.”

“He has no horse yet; the Major has been trying to sell him every old screw in the country, but he is too sharp for him and so——”

“And so he goes over and idles, and risks himself at Noone; I see. Well, he is a pleasant young fellow, and was very civil, even to an old hag like me, so I’ll do my best for him. I will get the Moores to ask him over, and I’ll speak a word to the Major! And now, Maria, that will do for to-day. I am not very strong, and a little of you goes a long way. There is your cloak, there is your umbrella; good-bye, and don’t bang the front-door.”

As soon as the same door had been shut, with a violence that shook the plaster from the ceiling (for Maria was not pleased), Miss Dopping hurried over to the seat she always occupied in the window, drew her shawl over her head, and peered into the street. She frequently sat in this nook, watching passers-by, and knocked loudly on the pane at any she specially wished to see, usually—almost always—men. She vastly preferred their society to that of her own sex, and openly gloried in the fact. Major Malone, Dr. Doran, Sir Forbes Gould, Lord Mudrath, the Parish Priest, were indiscriminately summoned in from time to time, to have a talk and a glass of good wine—and came right willingly. She was an aggressively hospitable old lady. No one was permitted to leave her house without partaking of some refreshment, whether it was port wine and a biscuit, a cup of tea and seed cake, or even a glass of milk! To refuse was to offend her seriously. The very drivers who brought her visitors on hack cars were sure of a bottle of porter. Eating and drinking was in her opinion, an outward and visible token of inward goodwill. Now she sits in the window, watching for the Major, and here he comes at last, rolling out of the post office. She rapped at him sharply with her knuckles, and soon afterwards his red face, and ample waistcoat, presented themselves in the doorway.

“Sit down, Major,” said his hostess effusively, “sit down; come over near the fire and tell me all the news. You are a great stranger these times, a great stranger.”

“Upon my word, Miss Sally,” rubbing his hands briskly, “I haven’t a word of news, good or bad. Have you?”

“What! and you only just out of the post office! Oh! come, come. Have you heard that your step-son is making great running over at Noone? How would you like Belle for a daughter-in-law?”

“Faith,” drawing forth and flourishing a silk handkerchief, “I admire his taste.”

“Well, it’s more than I do,” said Miss Dopping acrimoniously; “an idle, useless, ornamental hussey, that never gets out of bed till twelve in the day, and that can’t do a hand’s turn beyond trimming a bonnet, and squalling French songs—and I am not saying anything about her temper. However, he has private means and he will want them all——”

“Oh, he is not serious,” interrupted the Major, speaking hastily, and with visible alarm. “There is nothing in it, upon my sacred word of honour. Of course, he admires Belle, we all do; he is not a marrying man; he has no idea of marrying.”

“But she has, and he is always there, singing and tea-drinking; more by token he has nothing else to do.”

“I’m after a horse for him, but he is so plaguey hard to please.”

“Yes, he’s not to be pleased with one of your old garrons; and let me tell you this, Tom Malone, that if you can’t put your hand on something better soon, it’s a lady’s hack he will be wanting.”

“I see,” nodding his head several times. “The wind of the word is enough for Tom Malone. I’ll write to my cousin to-night. I don’t want the poor fellow to be hooked like that,” he added, with a keen sense of favours to come. “I’ll write——No, by Jove, as I am near the post office, I’ll telegraph! I’ll just run over now.”

The Major’s running was of course a mere figure of speech, a sort of hurried waddle; he lost no time and clattered downstairs, and speedily despatched the following message to his cousin, Mike Malone:

“Rail at once your artillery mare, or Clancy’s colt. Leave price to me. Guarantee satisfaction”; to which an answer came that same evening: “Mare sold, am sending Clancy’s colt.”