Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Ripple declared that it was beautifully poetic. It represented an autumn wood; a sunset glittered at the back, and in the fading light, with entwined arms, two young girls walked, one raising her hand to catch a drifting leaf, whilst the other watched three old women raking up those already fallen to the ground.

  Ripple went into fits of praise, and spent his leisure time reconstructing the descriptive paragraph he intended next year to send to the World; and at the end of October, Lewis took his picture up to London, intending to finish it during the winter for the Academy. The journey up to town was delightful.

  Mrs. Thorpe wondered if she would be able to supply the poor children of some parish with twenty pairs of stockings, while Mrs. Bentham told Lady Marion of the house she intended to take in Princess Gate; Lewis discoursed of his picture.

  He had already fixed upon Miss Jones, who had sat for the Salome, as the most suitable model he could have for one of the girls in his picture of autumn; and he talked perpetually with Ripple of what he would give for a lot of black wavy hair and a pair of wistful eyes. This the paragraphist promised to find him, whilst he explained the plot of a novel he contemplated writing.

  The two young men had become great friends; and during the following winter they never lost an opportunity of singing each other’s praises. Ripple introduced Lewis to Mr. Hilton, the chief of the Mediævalists, and daily Lewis’s star rose higher in the wide skies of success.

  He had now been definitely accepted by society. Every Wednesday he had a reception, and his studio was thronged with ladies and young men of poetic tastes. His pleasant manners had won him many friends; he was beginning to become the fashion. His picture of autumn was not only hung, but well hung, in the Academy; and when he drove back in the brougham with Mrs. Bentham, after the private view, he took her hand in his and kissed it reverentially.

  He did not know that she had given a commission to Mr. Carver to buy his pictures; yet he couldn’t but recognise her goodness. He was full of affection, and he said, trembling with emotion and with perfect sincerity:

  “You are too good, too good for me; what shall I do? What can I do to compensate you for all you have done for me?”

  Tears of joy welled into Mrs. Bentham’s eyes, and her look was as tender as a kiss.

  “You owe me nothing,” she replied. “Succeed; that is all I ask; if you do, it will be a sublime recompense.”

  He pressed her hand, and they relapsed into silence.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  SUCCESS.

  DURING THE NEXT four years Lewis basked in the sunshine of the pleasantest kind of prosperity. He was admitted by everybody, at least everybody he knew, to have talent. His pictures were about good enough to get hung at the Academy. He sold them sometimes to his friends; if he didn’t, Mr. Carver bought them. But, although he by no means played the part of a hermit, he showed no disposition to throw himself recklessly into pleasure and dissipation as he had done in Paris. Now and then he lost his head, but on the whole his conduct was praiseworthy. The encouragement he received, and the certain success of his work, forced him to produce.

  His friendship for Mrs. Bentham continued the same as usual. Society, having said its worst, had almost ceased to chatter; and now, when the subject was raised, she had more defenders than accusers. As people had before refused to see a possibility that she was not a guilty woman, they now declared that there was very little reason for supposing that she was not innocent. This revolution in Mrs. Bentham’s favour had been accomplished imperceptibly. The leaders of fashion had not busied themselves about what they considered private affairs; and the smaller fry, who had been the most loquacious, had come to the conclusion that she gave charming parties, and that, as she had in no way compromised herself, they were bound to defend her.

  Mrs. Bentham was thankful for these mercies, and continued to devote herself to Lewis’s welfare. It is true that she had found he was not all she had imagined him to be, but on the whole she was satisfied. His progress, if not rapid, was continuous; and, as he was only thirty, there was no reason to despair of his becoming as great an artist as she expected — as Mr. Carver prophesied.

  All her thoughts were concentrated on this; she had selected it as the aim and object of her life; and she worked for it patiently, perseveringly, and consistently. Not only did she buy his pictures, but she so contrived that her influence followed him wherever he went. She preferred the country to town, but she gave parties at Princess Gate to enable him to meet people whom it would be useful for him to know.

  By a hundred devices she guided him in the choice of his friends; she deprecated their mundane life, she cautiously avoided saying anything that would turn his attention from his work; in a word, she lived exclusively for him. His life had become her life. This unity of existence was neither the result of a romantic nor sensual passion, but of a desire to love and be loved; to live to accomplish something. Her marriage had betrayed her belief in all things, outraged all her illusions; and ten weary years of a purposeless existence had forced her upon the only path that lay through the void desert of her life. She had taken it, knowing well the responsibilities, and conscious of the terrible retribution that awaited her in the future.

  She had passed over many barriers, but there is one we can never remove, and daily she saw more clearly how implacably time was pushing her aside. She was still a handsome woman, but after thirty-five the years count double, and she was now forty. As she sat before her dressing table she noticed that her shoulders were beginning to lose their symmetry. She took up the comb and arranged her hair, and saw with regret how the dye had rendered it lustreless. Her complexion had faded, and the brick tints which were increasing on her forehead made her look her age. Her hands, like her face, had lost a little of their whiteness, but were still beautiful. “If I could only remain as I am!” she said to herself. “I should not mind about becoming younger.” There was a deep sorrow in the simple wish, a grief known to every woman of forty.

  Then Mrs. Bentham sighed heavily, for she felt that the twilight of the night that would close upon her life when she was no more than a friend to Lewis was beginning to fall.

  She had been now five years his mistress. They had made an excursion to Sweden, and had visited Holland; art and nature had served in turn as mirrors wherein they had sought to reveal to each other every emotion as it wavered in their souls’ depths. Apparently, they had been very happy. The old comedy of mistress and lover had been played, complete in every detail. At a certain hour, he would put down his brushes, send his model away, arrange the room, burn a pastille. Then a knock would come, a tall woman entered, — and how sweet were the first kisses through the veil! Then there was his work to be admired, and a thousand little things to be talked of. It was extraordinary how each trifle interested them. But are we not interested in things in proportion to the amount of ourselves we put into them? When dinner came up the curtains were drawn, and warm and snug amid the Japanese draperies they dined, chattering of the ball they were going to that night. Mrs. Bentham had brought a card for him.

  It was an annoyance that they had then to bid each other good-bye: but it would not do to drive up to a Belgravian mansion together. Lewis arrived before her, and when her shoulders, and crossed hands holding a bouquet appeared at the door, she sought with a circular glance for her lover; then with looks of well-bred satisfaction shook hands with her hostess and friends. Half an hour after she was speaking to him.

  All the pleasures of the world they had tasted, but a bitterness remained on her palate. Habit had softened her remorse, had shown her how by an effort of will to put away the painful thought that her whole life was a lie. Habit had worn a hole in her conscience through which the gall might drip away, but it had done no more. Lewis’s immoral nature had not been able to corrupt her. And this was one of his greatest grievances. He could not overcome the reserve she maintained even in the most passionate moments. She was a cold woman, and had given herself more from sentiment
than desire.

  Without being very much in love with her, he was very fond of her, and he could marvellously well ape the affection he could not feel. “There is always the chance,” he argued, “that I might not find another mistress so convenient, and nobody knows I am her ‘boy.’”

  And this was the reason of the discretion he had always observed concerning their liaison. He was in reality a little ashamed of her, and for worlds would not have it thought that he was the lover of so old a woman. He always dreamed of being known as the possessor of something very beautiful, very fashionable, someone at the head of society, that everybody admired; and it annoyed him that this desire remained still unrealized. Latterly this feeling had been getting stronger in his mind, and his attentions had relaxed considerably towards Mrs. Bentham. He did not, however, neglect her, as he did in Paris; there was nothing wild nor foolish now about his conduct; it was the studied indifference of the man of the world. He sometimes forgot to kiss her when she came to see him, and he passed whole days without seeing her.

  Mrs. Bentham was not blind to his coldness; she felt it very keenly, but strove not to see it, not even to think of it. She knew well that her life rested with him; when he left her she would be nothing, she would have nothing to look forward to; a few miserable years, and then old age. For hours she often sat thinking of the terrible punishment that awaited her; bitterly she regretted her former monotonous life that carried no pain with it. Still it appeared to her impossible that Lewis should cease to love her, but with a sudden thought the time would seem at hand. She knew she would one day have to say good-bye to him; and daily the habit of thinking how it would come about grew upon her. They might quarrel, or she might die. This fancy pleased her inexpressibly. And now as she sat before her glass dreaming sorrowfully, idly, she saw herself holding to him a dying hand, and with dying eyes wishing him well to the last.

  At that moment her maid brought her a letter, and said that Mrs. Thorpe was waiting breakfast. It was from Lady Marion. As she read the note, she seemed to despair. She read it over twice, spelling out each word slowly in her mind. “So she has come back,” thought Mrs. Bentham, and she instantly remembered the flirtation by the river-side. She remembered how passionately this excitable girl had set her heart on Lewis, and how determined she seemed to win him. Like a black shadow the word marriage flitted through her reveries; and for a long time, until Mrs. Thorpe herself came to fetch her down to breakfast, she stood staring into her glass, conscious that it told her the truth as well as any magician’s mirror.

  CHAPTER XX.

  A LONDON BALL ROOM IN ‘78.

  WHEN THE CONSERVATIVES came into power in 74, Lord Granderville had been transferred from St. Petersburg to Washington. Business being urgent he had stopped but a few weeks in England, and had not returned home since. The excitement and pomp of her father’s court and the sense of personal importance for a long time satisfied Lady Helen, and it was not until the autumn of 77 that she began to sigh for the pleasures of home, for the intimacy of old associations.

  Once set in motion her desires rolled fast, and the news that each mail brought of English fêtes and festivities contributed to increase her weariness of America. The glittering descriptions fired her with the desire to know this new London, resplendent with professional beauties and dreaming æsthetes — the name by which the Mediævalists were now known. She longed to mix in the conflict, every moment she remained out of this flaming centre of modern desire and thought seemed to her so much of her life lost. It was the time when the government of Lord Beaconsfield like a king star was waxing daily brighter in the heaven of glory, just before the fanfares of the Treaty of Berlin echoed triumphantly through all hearts, hushing even the discontented and distrusting Liberals.

  Never had London seen more wonderful fêtes; never even in the old monarchical ages had so many crowned heads passed along the banks of the Thames; for years never had the aristocracy so thoroughly dominated the people: never had the daughters of the cotton-spinners been so anxious to exchange their wealth for the honour of an escutcheon.

  A general sense of intoxication seemed to have risen like a mist, and to have penetrated even into the sternest hearts. Women almost ceased to take the trouble to conceal their intrigues; husbands were quickly found who did not mind their wives being written about and photographed for public sale. The trade in beauty waxed high; the wives of unknown county gentlemen were suddenly, in the space of a season, the notorieties of the palace and park. The presents they received were openly discussed in every drawing-room, and the sonnets of a third rate poet proclaimed their beauty to the world.

  Every age is remembered by a word. To organise represents the fugitive empire founded by Napoleon; and Lord Beaconsfield’s government will be remembered by the professional beauty of whom it is the eternal apotheosis.

  Never for years had women been so powerful; never had their influence been so manifest; it was no longer an occult force, they openly made and ruined reputations. An echo of the moral tone of the court of Louis XV. had passed over the upper air of English life. Married women had gradually begun to oust young girls out of rights they had always held. And this was productive of a terrible demoralisation; for the young girls were forced either to give up the liberties they owned, and charge their families with the task of finding them suitable husbands, or to compete with married women in looseness of morals.

  Naturally, their first impulse was to adopt the latter means; and it is impossible to say where and how the struggle would have ended if, with the triumph of the Liberals in ‘80, things had not gone back to their normal condition. Probably, the general profligacy that would have ensued would have forced the French system upon English society, and the young girl would have become the nonentity in England that she is in Paris.

  Lady Helen knew she was a beautiful woman, and the accounts that reached her weekly of the triumphs of her sex filled her with enthusiasm, and all her artistic sympathies awakened at the stories she heard of the æsthetes. Day passed after day, but Lady Granderville refused positively to accompany her daughter. At last Lady Helen’s health began to suffer from intense home sickness, and it was arranged that she should pass a year with Lady Marion, who offered to chaperone her. The voyage was tedious, but the sea breezes and the certainty that her arrival in London was only a question of days, put fair roses in her cheeks, and when she rushed upstairs to her aunt’s house in Queen Street, she was an ideal of health and beauty.

  Aunt and niece were the greatest friends, and the girl kissed and questioned Lady Marion tumultuously. As she stepped forward she saw Mrs. Bentham’s invitation on the table, and instantly her thoughts went back to the tennis party.

  Five years is a long time. She now remembered Lewis but dimly, yet the flirtation by the river remained still the most sentimental of her remembrances. Time had at once effaced and etherealised the memory, till she could not separate it from an abstract ideal at whose shrine she laid the poetry of her heart She did not analyse her feelings, but she knew she would like to see him again, and she listened, deeply interested, when Lady Marion told her how he had got on; how he was now a fashionable painter.

  For the next week Lady Helen’s time was completely taken up in discussing the making of her dress, wondering how handsome was the great professional beauty, Mrs. Campbell Ward, whom her uncle, Lord Worthing, so much admired; thinking of Lewis, boring her aunt to explain the artistic formula of the æsthetes, and trying to compose a sonnet in accordance with it.

  At last the evening came, and her heart beat as they traversed the immense vestibule, almost chapel-like in its silence, of Princess Gate, and ascended the staircase. It was in grey stone, lined with double balustrades branching to the right and left of a large mirror, and leading to a gallery encircling the first landing.

  As Lady Helen walked up the long carpet of the stairs, voluptuously soft beneath her feet, she saw herself rising out of the glass. She looked at her arms and shoulders, and wondered whe
ther any of the beauties she had heard so much of were whiter than she.

  She was really divine. Upon a white tulle skirt garnished behind with a flow of flounces, she wore a body of green satin bordered with English lace; a single flounce completed the front of her dress, which was trimmed with bunches and garlands of ivy. The body was cut low, and showed her immaculately white shoulders, now entirely developed and full of exquisite plenitudes and undulating lines. The roundness of her neck, and the richness of her golden hair, which on the neck faded to a saffron tint, and the supple swing of her figure made a complete picture of loveliness.

  The servant stood on the left hand as they mounted, and shouted their names.

  Mrs. Bentham leaned against the balustrade opposite the door of the drawing-room. She was dressed in pink, and held a large bouquet of white flowers in her hand.

  The two women looked at each other. Lady Helen thought that Mrs. Bentham had gone off terribly since she had seen her. Mrs. Bentham saw that Lady Helen was a dream of beauty, and she shivered from a feeling of indefinite apprehension. Lady Helen and her aunt passed into the first room: it was lined with pictures and women. On the right stood a group of men. Lord Senton’s narrow head, just covered with thin, fair hair, and Mr. Swannell’s large, bald crown, attracted the eye. A waltz was being played. Guests continued to come up the stairs, and the room was filling rapidly with clear toilettes and black coats.

  “By Jove, that’s Lady Helen; she’s come back from Washington,” said Lord Senton, disentangling himself from the group round the doorway. “I’ll ask her for this dance.”

  Lady Helen took his arm, and they pushed their way into the dancing-room. Lady Marion seeing an empty place near Lady Archer, sat down by her. Mr. Vyner’s dream had been realised, but he still continued, from force of habit, to watch his daughter.