B. M. Croker

“ Beauty in distress must ever appeal to the heart of a young man; only this was not Beauty—far from it—but Beauty’s cousin—besides, George loved dogs, and [Pg 145] he worked with all his zeal and strength for the sake of the sporting little terrier, whilst Pat laboured and grubbed, and carried out earth with hard horny hands. After twenty minutes’ incessant toil, through moss and roots, and frost-bound earth, there was a scream of delight from Betty, and a very dirty, frightened terrier struggled forth, and was clasped instantly in her arms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Woe, woe, be to the hand that would dispel them, and condemn her to damp dreary Noone, and the society of the Finnys, and [Pg 126] 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. ”

“ And the two girls girded up their dresses, and fled down the hill, an exceedingly active couple. “They ran like hares,” to quote admirers round the cover fires—they climbed, they jumped, they struggled through hedges, with the ease that came from youth, and health and practice. As they were about to breast Coolambar Hill, Betty paused suddenly with a dramatic gesture, and said:
“Hush! Cuckoo. I hear them; they have found!” and sure enough, their listening ears caught the distant whimper of hounds, now giving louder and louder tongue. ”

“ Joey tendered it proudly.
“It’s a fine, heavy bird,” said Denis, balancing it critically on the palm of his hand. “And it’s a mortal sin to give it to an old woman that does not know goose from grouse. Where was it shot?”
“By Bresna Wood, I’m thinking—they are in now, but it’s over early to be shooting them yet.”
Meanwhile Denis, with the skill of a conjurer, had thrust his hand into his lean game-bag, and dexterously substituted the noble woodcock for a miserable jack snipe, which, as all the world knows, strongly resembles the former in everything but size. “Well, Joey, here you are!” ”

“ 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 [Pg 125] 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. ”

“ George,” supplemented Maria, with a disagreeable giggle.
“Yes, the Major is a sore trial to all that are about him,” resumed Mrs. Redmond. “No one is to spend but himself. He must have good dinners and cigars and wine——”
“Whisky, you mean,” interrupted Maria with a snort.
“Well, whisky,” impatiently, “and a high dogcart, and curly-brimmed hats and patent-leather boots, but everyone else may live on potatoes and salt, and slave for him like niggers, or he roars like a mad tiger, and no one dare say a word.” ”

“ George, who rode well, and recognised a decent horse when he saw it, at last grew tired of this farce, and said:
“I always thought that Ireland was the country for good horses. Where are they? I never saw such a set of old screws—that one,” pointing to a discarded charger, “is like an old hair trunk, and has not a tooth in his head. My bump of veneration would forbid my getting on his back.”
“If you will go to a couple of hundred guineas,” said the Major (who loved not his step-son) , “I’ll engage to get you a flyer—a chaser.” ”

“ Also two very anxious fox terriers sniffing and yelping and running circles round her.
“It’s Miss Betty,” ejaculated Pat, and the sound of his voice made her spring to her feet, and confront them.
It was Miss Betty, the bath-chair girl; and how plain she was! Her hair was tumbling over her shoulders; her face was deadly white; her eyes dim and watery with crying; her nose the colour [Pg 142] of a ripe tomato; an unbecoming old hat; a raw November day—of a truth, Betty Redmond had never looked worse!
“Can I be of any assistance? Is anything the matter?” ”

“ Her restless spirit and maddening tongue (and, they said, mean ways) soon drove the old servants wild—servants accustomed to unlimited meat, unlimited tea, and unlimited leisure.
There was one tremendous scene of powerful domestic interest, and they all gave warning, and departed “en masse.” After this catastrophe, the keys were made over to Betty, who established a new régime—and a great calm. Belle was unspeakably miserable; she had nothing to do; no congenial society; nowhere to display her gay new hats. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Never marry a widow, unless her first husband was hanged. I have no doubt that if George the First was the cool-headed, fastidious, fine gentlemen his son is, he would have been devilish sick of you long ago. Mind one thing, I must have that hundred pounds this week; that chap is well off, times are hard. Why, I am actually smoking a pipe, and drinking cheap Scotch whisky! You are his mother, you have a strong claim on him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 130] 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. ”

“ But once the hare was found, and there was a bustle, and a rush forward at a narrow razor bank, with a big gripe on the near side, he cocked his ears, and practically took leave of the field, as if he had urgent private affairs, going at racing pace, and carrying his rider over it before he had time to breathe. He soon outpaced the furious huntsman, and the fleeting hounds, lastly the hare, and was making with all speed for his stable at Bridgetstown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such eyes are wont to dazzle, and into their depths it is most dangerous for a young man to gaze, unless he would be their slave for life. Luckily for mankind, the power of these eyes was unknown to their possessor; to her, they were merely a pair of useful organs, that saw well, slept well, and wept well—to the latter George Holroyd could bear testimony. [Pg 180] Betty had discarded her waterproof, and wore a well-fitting blue serge gown, a black straw sailor’s hat, in which was jauntily stuck two bits of scarlet geranium, the very last of the season. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He jumped very big, and appeared to know all about it, and as the fences seemed sound, George sat down in his saddle, and let him have it with the ashplant! A wilder career was seldom seen. “Clancy” tore along like a thing possessed, flying over hedges, till they seemed to whizz past. Once or twice, [Pg 203] he landed on his nose, but struggled up in a second, and was going again as hard as ever. Cuckoo, Betty, and Denis, posted on a neighbouring hill, with an old red spy-glass, watched his headlong course, with breathless interest. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Denis, don’t be ridiculous! you are like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. I know very well who is to blame for your idleness; no less a person than [Pg 110] yourself: you loaf about the country with a gun or a rod, when you ought to be earning your living, or learning to earn your living, like another young man. ”

“ Finny—who always spoke as if she was on the verge of tears—“and he has spent every penny of her fortune. I can’t think how they live at all; the poor things!”
“Oh, Mr. Holroyd helps them,” explained Mrs. Redmond. “Jane Bolland, at the Post Office, has often seen his cheques; he has a good private income, besides his pay.”
“Miss Dopping,” said Belle, suddenly addressing the old lady, who sat in grim, observant silence, with her purple gloves, exactly crossed on the Death’s-head handle of her umbrella; “you are the oldest inhabitant, and know everything ”

“ The hounds passed in full cry, within two fields of the girls, closely followed by [Pg 213] the huntsman, a steeplechase rider, and a spare-looking whip, on a bony chestnut thoroughbred.
“Here is George,” cried Cuckoo, triumphantly; “he is coming into this field. Does not ‘Clancy’ jump beautifully?” as the eager grey negotiated a razor bank, between two deep though narrow ditches. ”

“ Holroyd,” exclaimed the old lady (divided between delight at the offer, and apprehension as to the style of raiment in which her dear Belle might be discovered) , “I would not think of it; no, not on any account.”
“Oh! but you must. I assure you I will take no refusal, I never take a refusal” (this was an excellent trait, thought the old lady) , as he placed his hand on the back of the chair.
“Here, Denis, you can carry my gun, and Crab will have to walk; he is more frightened than hurt;” and before Mrs. Redmond could expostulate, he was rolling her rapidly homewards. ”

“ When he bolts with hounds (as in course he always does) , and mostly lames a couple of dogs, stick in the spurs, and lam into him with a new ashplant, until he is fit to drop, just give him his head, and the stick: he could not fall if he tried, and when ye feel him under you, just devouring the ground, and greedy to be airing himself over an eighteen foot gripe and double, ye would not grudge three hundred sovereigns; he is a chaser, that’s what he is, and invaluable to a stout rider, a bold man like yourself—but many and many’s the time I thought he would make a ghost of me. ”