by George Moore
Mrs. Barton’s coaxing laugh was heard, and then reference was made to the detachment of the Connaught Bangers stationed at Galway, and the possibility of their giving a dance was eagerly discussed. Mr. Ryan had a word to say anent the hunting prospect, and, when May Gould declared she was going to ride straight and not miss a meet, she completed the conquest of Mr. Scully, and encouraging glances were exchanged between them until Lady Sarah looked inquiringly round the table — then she pushed back her chair. All rose, and a moment after, through the twilight of the drawing-room, colour and nudity were scattered in picturesque confusion.
Every mind was occupied by one thought — how the pleasure of the dinner-party had been spoiled by that horrible Land League discussion. All wondered who had introduced the subject, and the blame was fixed upon Mr. Adair. Mrs. Gould, in her homely way, came to the point at once:
“People say he is so clever, but I am sure I can’t see it. He has spent a fortune in building farmyards in concrete, and his sawmill, I hear, costs him twenty pounds a month dead loss, and he is always writing letters to the papers. I never can think much of a man who writes to the papers.”
“A most superior man,” said Lady Sarah, who, notwithstanding her thirty-five years, had not entirely given up hope. “He took honours at Trinity.”
Then Mr. Burke and Lord Kilcarney were spoken of, and some new anecdotes were told of Mr. Ryan. The famous one — how he had asked a lady to show him her docket at the Galway ball, when she told him that she was engaged for all the dances, excited — as it never failed to do — a good deal of laughter. Mrs. Barton did not, however, join in the conversation; she knew, if she did, that the Ladies Cullen would be as rude as the absence of Milord, and the fact that she was a guest in their house, would allow them to be. Mrs. Barton’s mind was now occupied with one thought, and, leaning back in her chair, she yielded herself entirely to it. Although the dinner-party had been spoiled by Mr. Adair’s uncontrollable desire to impart information, she had, nevertheless, noticed that Captain Hibbert had been very much struck with Olive’s Beauty. She was aware that her daughter was a beautiful girl, but whether men would want to marry her Mrs. Barton did not know. Captain Hibbert’s conduct would help her to arrive at a decision. She certainly dreamed of a title for Olive. Lord Kilcarney was, alas! not to be thought of. Ah! if Mr. Burke were only Lord Kilcarney! But he was not. However, Captain Hibbert would be a fairly good match. He was of excellent family, and had five hundred a year, and in England; — but to snatch up the very first fish that came by! There was no saying whom they would meet at the Castle. Still, to encourage a flirtation could be no harm; if they met anything better, it could be broken off; if they did not, it would be a very nice match indeed. Besides, there was no denying that Olive was a little too naive in her manner. Captain Hibbert’s society would brush that off, and Olive would go up to the Castle with the reputation of having made a conquest.
Such were Mrs. Barton’s thoughts as she sat, her hands laid like china ornaments on her lap; her feet were tucked under the black-pleated skirt, and she sometimes raised her Greuze-like eyes and looked at her daughter.
The girls were grouped around a small table, on which stood a feather-shaded lamp. In clear voices and clear laughs they were talking of each other’s dresses. May had just stood up to show off her skirt. She was a superb specimen of a fat girl; and in a glow of orange ribbons and red hair she commanded admiration.
“And to think she is going to waste her time with that dissipated young man, Mr. Scully!” thought Mrs. Barton. Then Olive stood up: she was all rose, and when, laughing, with a delicious movement of the arms she hitched back her bustle, she lost her original air, and looked as might have done the Fornarina when not sitting in immortality. It was the battle of blonde tints: Olive, with primroses and corn; May, with a cadmium yellow and red gold.
“And now, Alice, get up and let’s see you!” she cried, catching hold of her sister’s arm.
Still resisting, Alice rose to her feet, and May, who was full of good nature, made some judicious observations.
“And how different we all look from what we did at the convent! — do you remember our white frocks?”
Alice’s face lit up with a sudden remembrance, and she said:
“But why, Lady Sarah, have we not seen Cecilia? I have been thinking of her during dinner. I hope she is not ill?”
“Oh! dear me, no; but poor Cecilia does not care to come down when there is company.”
“But can I not see her?”
“Oh, certainly; you will find her in her room. But you do not know the way; I will ring for my maid, she will show you.”
At this moment men’s voices were heard on the staircase. The ladies all looked up; the light defining the corner of a forehead, the outline of a nose and chin, bathing a neck in warm shadow, modelling a shoulder with grey tints, sending a thousand rays flashing through the diamonds on the bosom, touching the finger-rings, and lastly dying away amid the folds of the dresses that trailed on the soft carpet. Mr. Ryan, walking with his habitual roll, and his hands in his pockets, entered — his tie was under his left ear. Mr. Lynch, haunted by the idea that he had not made himself agreeable to Alice during dinner, sat down beside her. Mr. Scully made a rush for May. Tall, handsome Captain Hibbert, with his air of conventional high-style, quitted Lord Dungory, and asked Olive what they had been saying since they left the diningroom. Mr. Burke tried to join in the conversation, but Mr. Ryan, thinking it would be as well not to let the occasion slip of speaking of a certain “bay harse who’d jump anythin’,” took him confidentially by the sleeve.
“Now, look here, will yer,” he began. The rest of his remarks were lost in the hum of the conversation, and, by well-bred transitions, observations were made on the dancing and hunting prospects of the season. Mr. Adair took no interest in such subjects, and, to everyone’s relief, he remained silent. May and Fred Scully had withdrawn to a corner of the room where they could talk more at their ease; Captain Hibbert was conscious of nothing but Olive and her laughter, which rippled and tinkled through an odour of coffee.
Little by little she was gaining the attention of the room, Mr. Adair ceased to listen to Lord Dungory, who was explaining why Leonardo da Vinci was a greater painter than Titian. Mr. Lynch left off talking to Alice; the little blonde honourable looked sillier and sillier as his admiration grew upon him. Mrs. Barton, to hide her emotion, engaged in an ardent discussion, concerning the rearing of calves, with Mrs. Gould. Lady Sarah bit her lip, and, unable to endure her enemy’s triumph any longer, she said in her most mellifluous tone:
“Want you to sing us something, Captain Hibbert.”
“Well, really, Lady Sarah, I should be very glad, but I don’t think, you know — I am not sure I could manage without my music.”
“I shall be very glad to accompany you. I think I know “In the Gloaming,” and I have heard you sing that.”
Olive, at a sign from her mother, entreated, and when the gallant Captain rolled from under the brown-gold moustache the phrase, “Oh! my darling,” all strove not to look at her, and when he dropped his voice to a whisper, and sang of his aching heart, a feeling prevailed that all were guilty of an indiscretion in listening to such an intimate avowal. Then he sang two songs more, equally filled with references to tears, blighted love, and the possibility of meeting in other years, and Olive hung down her head, overcome by the fine sentiments which she felt were addressed to her.
Meanwhile, Alice had been left listening, alone and unnoticed. She was aware that her sister was the object of all eyes and thoughts; she was gaining the triumph that men are agreed may be ambitioned without impropriety by women. Alice was a healthy-bodied girl, every organ in her functioned admirably, and the blood flowed as warm in her as in her beautiful sister. Certainly the men about her did not in the least correspond with her ideal, but this scarcely rendered the fact that they neglected her less bitter. Presently she asked Lady Sarah if she might go upstairs and see Cecilia
.
She found the little cripple leaning over the bannisters listening to the sound of voices.
“Oh, my dear! is it you? I expected you to come to see me when you left the gentlemen in the dining-room.”
“I couldn’t come before, dear,” said Alice, kissing her friend. “Just as I was asking Lady Sarah the way to your room we heard them coming.”
“And how did you like the party? and which of the men did you think the nicest?”
“I did not care for any of them; and oh! that odious Mr. Lynch!”
Cecilia’s eyes flashed with a momentary gleam of satisfaction. “Yes, aren’t they horrid? and the way they leer at women, isn’t it beastly?” Alice did not answer, and, without a transitional phrase, Cecilia spoke of a little excursion — a walk to the Brennans, who lived two miles distant — that she had been planning for the last few days.
In about twenty minutes Mrs. Barton was heard calling to Alice, and Lord Dungory, with a profusion of gracious words and compliments, put them into the carriage. Then, in the close intimacy of the brougham, of upheaved petticoats and skirts, conversation began:
“Oh, mamma! did you see how cross little Mr. Burke looked because he could not get near me? and tell me, do you think I looked well in my pink tulle? Captain Hibbert said something about my belying my name; that I ought to he called Rose or Lily. I really didn’t know what he meant. I think Rose a hateful name. And what did you think of May — she looked very well in that black-net with yellow ribbons, did she not? And I think she likes Mr. Scully. He often looked up at me, but she wouldn’t let him get away. Do you think he admired me?”
Then, after a pause, the thin arms and bosoms of the Ladies Cullen were ridiculed, the relative dirt of Messrs. Ryan and Lynch disputed, the tiresomeness of Mr. Adair alluded to, until the conversation returned again to the success that Olive had achieved, and the certainty that her dress became her to perfection.
Around them the barren country lay submerged in shadows; the ridge of the uplands melted into the drifting grey of the sky, and every moment the hearth-fire of a cabin started into or disappeared from sight. They burned, steadfast and solitary, in the dim wastes that stretched from hill to hill, or were seen in clusters between the dark blowing foliage of the roadside poplars; and as the carriage passed, on a doorway full of yellow light, the form of a man was often sketched in menacing black.
CHAPTER IV.
DURING THE NEXT three or four days, the girls’ life at Brookfield settled down into certain grooves.
Now Alice knew that about half-past one o’clock she would hear the wheels of Lord Dungory’s carriage roll up to the hall-doors. Mrs. Barton would be dressed to receive him; the glass of sherry, the little table, the coaxing laughs, and the compliments would be all prepared and served out with automatic precision. Sometimes, however, they were interrupted by Captain Hibbert, who came riding over from Gort. Then Mrs. Barton would propose a walk in the shrubberies, and with surprising ease the old and the young couple fell in, and sympathised with each other’s habits. From her window Alice often saw them, and in fancy heard the crisp, courtly compliments of the portly, but tightly buttoned-up old lord, and the drawled-out platitudes of the tall and handsome captain.
And to these arrangements Mr. Barton paid no heed whatever. Immediately after breakfast he retired to his studio. When he was in painting-humour, the baritone voice roared in imitation of a lion; when he was in a musical mood, it shouted forth some old Italian air to the tinkling of the guitar. And the great room, with its strange pictures, its smell of tobacco, its litter of books and old newspapers — in a word, its air of candour, of idea — had for Alice, weary of the rest of the house, an indescribable fascination. Dearly she would have liked to have sat and talked, as he painted the story of the man-eater; but it distressed her to listen to the languid nonsense he spoke of his genius, and she noticed that, being now engaged on many nudities, her presence embarrassed him. It was, therefore, essential for her to discover how the hours might best be filled, and in which of the things within her reach she was most interested.
Mrs. Barton had decided that the young ladies were to have a maid to themselves; — a maid who, in a certain sense, would he a companion, and who could rearrange, and, if necessary, copy a dress from the original model. Barnes was not what would be imagined; she was a large woman of forty, but she concealed her age under a light, smiling manner. Generally she was to be found sewing in the room that had once been the nursery, but which had lately been refurnished, and converted into a kind of plain sitting-room — a workroom, where the young ladies were supposed to read, embroider, and write their letters. Once, Captain Hibbert, with many reprimands for his indiscretion, was brought up to see this feminine nook.
Barnes received him with smiles of recognition; smiles that said: Oh! of you, sir, I have heard much from my young ladies — Miss Olive in particular.
These insidious agreeabilities soon won the younger sister’s heart; and when not in the drawing-room with him, as he was now called, mistress and maid, the work-basket and the skirt of a dress between them, sat for hours whispering together. If Alice came into the room, the conversation came to a full stop, or lapsed into a series of giggles, or sometimes plucking up courage, and as if anxious to rid the room of her sister’s presence, Olive told how Barnes was going out next Sunday with her young man. Alice revolted against the odours of the kitchen, which these conferences exhaled, and she would steal away to walk about the grounds by herself, or in the fragrant shadows of the chestnut-trees, sit for hours absorbed in the lofty charms of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. They suited her present mood, and, until the day came when she was to meet Cecilia, she stood on ramparts with Amy Robsart, and, riding on palfreys, experienced all the passion and despair of Leicester’s great betrayal.
The girls had given each other rendezvous at the gate of Dungory Castle. Lover was never more anxious to meet mistress than this little deformed girl to see her friend; and Alice could see her walking hurriedly up and down the gravel-sweep in front of the massive grey-stone Lodge.
“She will see me next time she turns,” thought Alice, and immediately after Cecilia uttered a joyful cry and ran forward.
“Oh! so it is you, Alice. I am so glad. I thought you were going to disappoint me.”
“And why, dear, did you think I was going to disappoint you?” said Alice, stooping to kiss the wan, wistful face.
“I don’t know — I can’t say, but I fancied something would happen,” (and the great brown eyes began to melt with tears of delight) “I had, you know, set my heart on this walk with you.”
This confession of love was delicious.
“I am sure the pleasure is as much mine as yours; and now, whither lies our way?”
“Through the deer-park, through the oakwood, across the fields into the highroad, and then you are at the gate.”
“Won’t that be too far for you?”
“Oh, not at all; it is not more than a mile-and-a-half, but for you, you bad to come another mile-and-a-half. It is fully that from here to Brookfield. But tell me, dear,” said Cecilia, clinging to her friend’s arm, “why have you not been over to see me before? It is not kind of you; we have been home from school now over a fortnight, and, except on the night of the dinner-party, I haven’t seen you once.”
“I was coming over to see you last week, dear, but, to tell you the truth, mamma prevented me. I cannot think why, but somehow she does not seem to care that I should go to Dungory Castle. But for the matter of that, why did you not come and see me? I have been expecting you every day. Why haven’t you been?”
“I couldn’t come either. My sisters advised me — I mean, insisted on my stopping at home.”
“And why?”
“I really can’t say,” replied Cecilia.
And now Alice knew the Ladies Chilien hated Mrs. Barton for her intimacy with Lord Dungory. Shrinking with shame she longed to talk the matter out, but dared not; while Cecilia regretted she h
ad spoken; for, with the quickness of the deformed, she knew that Alice had divined the truth of the family feud. The silence was irritating, and then, with their parasols slanting to the west, they talked of indifferent things.
The sun fell like lead upon the short grass of the deer-park, and the frizzled heads of the hawthorns. On the right, the green masses of the oakwood shut in the view, and the stately red-deer, lolling their high necks, marched away through the hillocks, as if offended at their solitude being disturbed. One poor crippled hind walked with a wretched sidling movement, and Alice hoped Cecilia would not notice it, lest it should remind her of her own misfortune.
“I am sure,” she said, “we never knew finer weather than this in England. I don’t think there could be finer weather, and still they say the tenants are worse off than ever; that no rent at all, at least nothing above Griffith’s valuation, will be paid.”
“Do they speak much of Griffith’s valuation at Dungory Castle?”
“Oh! they never cease, and — and — I don’t know whether I ought to say, but it won’t matter with you? I suppose — mind, you must not breathe a word of this at Brookfield — the fact is my sisters’ school — you know they have a school, and go in for trying to convert the people — well, this has got papa into a great deal of trouble. The Bishop has sent down another priest — I think they call it a mission — and we are going to be preached against, and papa received a threatening letter this morning. He is going, I believe, to apply for police.”
“And is this on account of the proselytising?”
“Oh! no, not entirely; he has refused to give his tenants Griffith’s valuation; but it makes one very unpopular to be denounced by the priest. I assure you, papa is very angry. He told Sarah and Jane this morning at breakfast that he’d have no more of it; that they had no right to go into the poor people’s houses and pull the children from under the beds, and ask why they were not at school; that he didn’t care of what religion they were as long as they paid the rent; and that he wasn’t going to have his life endangered for such nonsense. There was an awful row at home this morning. For my own part, I must say I sympathise with papa. Besides the school, Sarah has, you know, a shop, where she sells bacon, sugar, and tea at cost price, and it is well-known that those who send their children to the school will never be asked to pay their bills. She wanted me to come and help to weigh out the meal, Jane being confined to her room with a sick headache, but I got out of it. I would not, if I could, convert those poor people. You know, I often fancy — T mean fear — I often sympathise too much with your creed. It was only at service last Sunday I was thinking of it; our religion seems so cold, so cheerless compared to yours. You remember the convent-church at St. Leonards — the incense, the vestments, the white-veiled congregation — oh, how beautiful it was; we shall never be so happy again!”
