“How can you be so ridiculous; as if poor Betty would be in the way any more than she was at Noone!”
“At any rate, your mother could not spare her—even if there was no other reason.”
“That is true, and I am certain Augustus Moore could not spare her either. Betty will be old Sally Dopping’s heiress, and a great catch. Now let us go back to the others, I hate people to suppose that we are billing and cooing, it’s so stupid. By the way, those two friends of yours, Mrs. Calvert and her sister, are a pair of detestable cats. I can’t bear them, and I know they can’t bear me. I shall be so glad when I am formally handed over to you. Come along now, they are making tea in the verandah, let us join the rest of the company,” to which request George agreed with rather suspicious alacrity. That interview was over, and he had played his part pretty well. So he said to himself, as he wiped his pale forehead, and followed his unsuspecting fiancée out of the room. Sitting opposite to Belle, as she sipped her tea, and chattered volubly, he realised what a very pretty woman she was, especially when he contrasted her with various faded matrons, who were waiting for the next homeward-bound steamer. She had all the advantages of taste, and dress, and freshness.
She was “handsome, agreeable, and good-tempered,” he assured himself, and he was doing what was right in his own eyes—and it might have been worse. Poor George!
CHAPTER XII.
“‘SHE’ UNDERSTANDS ME.”
George Holroyd’s leave to England had borne but faint resemblance to the plan he had sketched out, as he steamed homewards, with his mind full of anticipations of sport, and amusement, and his pockets full of money. It is true that he had had some capital hunting (thanks to Clancy’s grey, who was now in a racing stable), but his shooting and fishing projects, his visits to race-courses, his trip on the Continent, were still so many castles in the air. He was returning all but penniless, minus new clothes, new saddlery, a new battery of guns—minus his money, and, above all, minus his heart. What had he to show for his eight months’ tour to Europe? One badly executed photograph—a cheap little silver brooch, and a withered flower, but these he valued beyond all price!
On the passage out, he was a dull enough companion, and took a very subordinate interest in smoking concerts, whist, or theatricals, and no interest whatever in various well-favoured young ladies; no, he paced the deck in solitude, revolving plans that might tend to his getting his foot upon the ladder that leads to good things and lofty positions, i.e., “the staff.” He must study the language in earnest, and pass the Higher Standard, so as to be eligible for an appointment that would give him an increase of pay, and enable him to make a home that would not be quite unworthy of Betty.
At Port Said he received a cheerful epistle from Belle; she wrote a good hand, and, like many people who are not brilliantly intellectual, an excellent letter, if her orthography was not always above suspicion. She had the knack of giving interesting items of news in a short space, but among her whole budget there was not a word about her cousin—truly the play of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. After a rough passage through the south-west monsoon, Mr. Holroyd arrived in Bombay, and set out for a four days’ railway journey up the country. Once the Ghauts are crossed, there is but little to enliven the landscape, through the low scrub jungle of the Central Provinces, through large tracts of grain, varied by a few mosques and tombs, past fortified mud villages, herds of lean cattle, and whitewashed railway stations, where the same bill of fare remains unchanged from year’s end to year’s end—tough beefsteak and fiery curry!
At last, in the dim light of early morning, George arrived at his destination, the insignificant cantonment of Mangobad. His brother officers welcomed him warmly, listened eagerly to all his news, and enquired about his new guns, and mentioned a couple of smart racing ponies that they had, so to speak, marked down for him!
“No doubt they would suit me down to the ground if I could afford them,” he answered in reply to a suggestion that he ought to wire and secure them at once. “But I can’t afford anything better than a barrack tat. It’s a fact,” looking frankly round his comrades who were assembled in the billiard-room, after mess. “I am stone broke; I have lost a lot of money. I am as poor as Job.”