INTERFERENCE.

A Novel.

BY B. M. CROKER, AUTHOR OF “PROPER PRIDE,” “PRETTY MISS NEVILLE,” “A BIRD OF PASSAGE,” “DIANA BARRINGTON,” “TWO MASTERS,” &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I.

London: F. V. WHITE & CO., 31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1891.

PRINTED BY KELLY & CO., MIDDLE MILL, KINGSTON-ON-THAMES; AND GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, W.C.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

INTERFERENCE.

CHAPTER I.BALLINGOOLE.

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.

[Pg 2]

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[Pg 3] 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[Pg 4] 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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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.”

[Pg 8]

“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.

[Pg 9]

“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,”[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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[Pg 12] 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[Pg 13] 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,[Pg 14] 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.

[Pg 15]

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[Pg 16] 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,[Pg 17] 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[Pg 18] 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.

[Pg 19]

CHAPTER II.GOSSIP—(WITHOUT TEA).

“Dear me, Miss Dopping!” exclaimed her hostess, rising with an effort from the depths of a low seat. “This is indeed an unexpected pleasure. It is ages since I have seen you! Do come near the fire. Ah, I forgot, you are not one of its worshippers, like me. I would rather dispense with my dinner than my fire!”

“You would not say that, if you had tried it,” rejoined Miss Dopping, seating herself bolt upright, and gazing sharply around her.

[Pg 20]

Mrs. Redmond shook her head from side to side, like a great pendulum, and leant back in her chair, and crossed her arms over her extensive waist. She was a majestic matron, dressed in black, with heavy regular features, little hard yellowish eyes, and a deliberate delivery. Her thick grey hair was covered with a black cap, and her plump hands with a pair of soiled grey kid gloves, minus their finger-tops.

Isabel or Belle—“Belle and the Dragon” were the names by which she and her mother were known in certain profane circles—lounged in an easy attitude in a basket chair, holding an Irish Times between her face and the fire. It was a handsome face, and she did well to protect it. Belle was a young lady of, shall we say, seven and twenty?—at any rate she says so herself,[Pg 21] and looks no more, and of course every woman is the age she looks—with a pair of dangerous black eyes, straight black brows, a short upper lip, a pointed chin, and a sufficient supply of wavy dark hair. A small, graceful figure and a slender foot, were not the least of her attractions. But at present, neither figure nor foot are seen to any advantage, for she wears a dilapidated old red tea-gown, with ragged laces and stained front, and a pair of extremely passée slippers. In fact Belle’s toilette must not be too closely scanned.

“Now, don’t look at me! Don’t look at me,” she said, gesticulating with much animation, and playfully holding the newspaper between Miss Dopping and herself. “I know I am an awful object; but in winter, I never adorn[Pg 22] myself unless I am going out—there is no one to dress for!”

“No men, you mean,” amended Miss Dopping, severely.

“Yes, I do. There is not a man at this side of Ballingoole, except Major Malone and Dr. Doran.”

“And he is an old woman,” observed Miss Finny tartly—but naturally the daughter of the late practitioner had but scant mercy on her father’s successor.

“You are a great visitor these times, Mrs. Finny,” remarked Miss Dopping, pointedly.

“Well, dear, just once in a way, you know,” returned Mrs. Finny apologetically. “Only just once in a way.”

She was a meek little lady, with a pretty, faded face, and a plaintive whine in her voice, totally different from her tall, masculine-looking daughter, who[Pg 23] had hard features, a square jaw, and a mouth like the slit of a letter-box—and in that mouth a renowned and dreaded tongue—Maria Finny was about forty-five years of age, embittered against all mankind, and the implacable enemy of the young and well-favoured of her own sex. Poor Maria! In her life there had been but little sunshine, and not one ray of love, or the shadow of a lover. A long monotonous tale without a plot, without a hero—she had not even a hobby or a pet, she did not read, paint or write; she superintended the scanty ménage, she ruled her mother, and lived meagrely and discontentedly, an aggrieved, soured woman, with an unfulfilled youth, and a bleak, hopeless future; and yet Maria had ten times more capacity for passionate, unselfish love than brilliant Belle Redmond with[Pg 24] her enchanting smile and sympathetic eyes. Perhaps, if Maria’s upper lip had been half an inch shorter, if her mouth

had been of more reasonable dimensions, it might have made a vast difference in her destiny—who knows?

“We thought we would just look in as we were passing,” she said, continuing her mother’s explanation, “and tell Mrs. Redmond the news.”

“Yes,” broke in Mrs. Redmond, with unusual animation. “There is a stir in town, haven’t you heard?”

“That Peter Brock’s daughter is going to America after all? Of course I know that,” replied Miss Dopping contemptuously.

“Not at all,” said Maria. “Far finer news than about Mary Brock. I met Mrs. Malone driving herself into town in the donkey car; she seemed quite[Pg 25] excited, and her face all flushed in patches. She had just had a telegram; her son, Mr. Holroyd, has come home from India on sick leave, and he has not given her any time to think it over, for he arrives to-night.”

“Delightful!” ejaculated Belle, dropping her paper, and clapping her hands softly.

“He has not been at Bridgetstown these five years, and then only for a few days,” remarked Mrs. Finny. “He and the Major don’t get on. Nor stable their horses together.”

“And no wonder,” retorted Maria forcibly. “Young Holroyd is a gentleman, and Major Malone is a gambling, greedy, selfish, old bully, and a nice respectable example for his son, Denis, spending half his time on race-courses, betting away every penny, and leaving[Pg 26] his family paupers. It’s no wonder Mrs. Malone’s hair falls out, and she looks so heart-broken! She only keeps three servants now, and sells the vegetables and fruit, and the buttermilk, a penny a can. To my certain knowledge, she has had that brown bonnet this three years, and Cuckoo’s boots are a shame and a disgrace.”

“At any rate, she has only herself to thank,” returned Mrs. Redmond, leaning still further back in her chair, and placing two capacious slippers on the fender, where they had a fairly prominent effect.