Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “Yes, indeed; and how cross we used to think those dear nuns. You remember Sister Mary, how she used to lecture Violet for getting up to look out of the windows. What used she to say?— ‘Do you want, miss, to be taken for a housemaid or scullery-maid, staring at people in that way as they pass?’”

  “Yes, yes; that’s exactly how she used to speak,” exclaimed Cecilia, laughing. And, as the girls advanced through the oakwood, they helped each other through the briers and over the trunks of fallen trees, talking, the while, of their past life, which now seemed to them but one long, sweet joy. A reference to how May Gould used to gallop the pony round and round the field at the back of the convent was interrupted by the terrifying sound of a cock-pheasant getting up from some bracken under their very feet; and, amid the scurrying of rabbits in couples and half-dozens, modest allusion was made to the girls who had been expelled in’7 6. Absorbed in the sweetness of the past, the girls mused, until they emerged from the shade of the woods into the glare and dust of the highroad. Then came a view of rocky country, with harvesters working in tiny fields, and then the great blue background of the Clare Mountains was suddenly unfolded. A line and a bunch of trees indicated the Brennan domain. The gate-lodge was in ruins, and the weed-grown avenue was covered with cowdung.

  “Which of the girls do you like best?” said Alice, who wished to cease thinking of the poverty in which the spinsters lived.

  “Emily, I think; she does not say much, but she is more sensible than the other two. Gladys wearies me with her absurd affectations; Zoe is well enough, but what names!” —

  “Yes, Emily has certainly the best of the names,” Alice replied, laughing.

  “Are the Miss Brennans at home?” said Cecilia, when the maid opened the hall-door.

  “Yes, miss — I mean your ladyship — will you walk in?”

  “You’ll see, they’ll keep us waiting a good half-hour while they put on their best frocks,” said Cecilia, as she sat down in a faded armchair in the middle of the room. A piano was rolled close against the wall, the two rosewood cabinets were symmetrically placed on either side of the further window; from brass rods the thick, green curtains hung in stiff folds, and, since the hanging of some water-colours, done by Zoe before leaving school, no alterations, except the removal of the linen covers from the furniture when visitors were expected, had been made in the arrangement of the room.

  The Brennan family consisted of three girls — Gladys, Zoe, and Emily. Thirty-three, thirty-one, and thirty were their respective ages. Their father and mother, dead some ten or a dozen years, had left them joint proprietors of a small property of seven hundred a year. Gossip had magnified this to three thousand, and they were, therefore, known as the heiresses of Kinavarah. All three were dumpty and dark, and in snub-noses and blue eyes their Celtic blood was easily recognisable. Every year they went to spend a month at the Shelborne Hotel in Dublin, and they returned with quite a little trousseau. Gladys and Zoe always dressed alike, from the bow round the neck to the bow on the little shoe that they so artlessly withdrew when in the presence of gentlemen. Gladys’ formula for receiving visitors never varied:

  “Oh, how do you do — it is really too kind of you to give yourself all this trouble to come and see us.”

  Immediately after Zoe put out her hand. Her manner was more jocose:

  “How d’ye do? We are, I am sure, delighted to see you will you have a cup of tea? I know you will.”

  Emily, being considered too shy and silent, did not often come down to receive company. On her devolved the entire management of the house and servants; the two elder sisters killed time in the way they thought would give least offence to their neighbours.

  Being all St. Leonards girls, the conversation immediately turned on convent-life. “Was madame this there? Had madame that left?” Garden, chapel, school, hall, dormitory, refectory were visited; every nun was passed in review, and, in the lightness and gaiety of the memories invoked, even the wrinkling faces of the spinsters flushed and looked fresh again. Then, sighing, they recalled the hopes that had withered, and the conversation came to a pause.

  Allusion was made to the disturbed state of the country, and to a gentleman who, it was reported, was going to be married. But, as Alice did not know the person whose antecedents were being called into question, she took an early opportunity of asking Gladys if she eared for riding? “No, they never went to ride now: they used to, but they came in so fatigued that they could not talk to Emily; so they had given up riding.” Did they care for driving? “Yes, pretty well; but there was no place to drive to except into Gort, and as people had been unjust enough to say that there were always to be seen in Gort, they had given up driving; unless, of course, they went to call on friends.” Then tea was brought in; and, apropos of a casual reference to conventual buttered toast, the live girls talked, until nearly six o’clock, of their girlhood — of things that would never have any further influence in their lives, of happiness they would never experience again. At last Alice and Cecilia pleaded that they must be getting home.

  As they walked across the fields, the girls only spoke occasionally. Alice strove to see clear, but her thoughts were clouded, scattered, diffused. Force herself as she would, still no conclusion seemed possible; all was vague and contradictory. She had talked to these Brennans, seen how they lived, could guess what their past was, what their future must be. In that neat little house, their uneventful life dribbled away in maiden idleness; neither hope nor despair broke the cruel triviality of their days — and yet, was it their fault? No; for what could they do if no one would marry them? — a woman could do nothing without a husband. There is a reason for the existence of a pack-horse, but none for that of an unmarried woman. She can achieve nothing — she has no duty but, by blotting herself out, to shield herself from the attacks of ever-slandering friends. Alice had looked forward to a husband and a home as the certain accomplishment of years; now she saw that a woman, independently of her own will, may remain single.

  “I wonder,” she said, forgetting for the moment she was speaking to Cecilia, “I wonder none of those Brennans get married; you can’t call them ugly girls, and they have some money. How dreadfully lonely they must be living there by themselves!”

  “I think they are far happier as they are,” said Cecilia, and her brown eyes set in liquid-blue looked strangely at Alice as she helped her over the low wall. The girls walked in silence through the tomb-like stillness of the silver-firs; and their thoughts were sharp as the needles that scratched the pale sky. Cecilia continued:

  “It may seem odd of me to say so — of course I would not say this to anyone but you — but I assure you, even if I were as nice as you are, dear, nothing would induce me to marry. I never took the slightest pleasure in any man’s conversation, and the idea — Oh! it seems to me too revolting, and we make so little of ourselves. Now at home it never ceases. Jane asks papa if he has seen the So-and-sos, and immediately Sarah chimes in: ‘Well, they have been going out a long time now, and they don’t seem to be pulling off anything. I never believed in her flirtation with such a man; they did their very best to hook him, but it was no go, he slipped through their fingers,’ etc. Don’t you agree with me, Alice? But no, I know you don’t,” she said, breaking off suddenly—” I know you like men; I feel you do. Don’t you?”

  “Well, since you put it so plainly, I confess I should like to know nice men. I do not care for those I have met hitherto, particularly those I saw at dinner the other night; but I believe there are nice men in the world.”

  “Oh! no there aren’t.”

  “Well, Cecilia, I don’t see how you can speak so positively as that; you have seen as yet very little of the world.”

  “Ah! yes, but I know it; I can guess it all, I know it instinctively, and I hate it.”

  “There is nothing else, so we must make the best of it.”

  “But there is something else — there is God, and the love of beautiful things. I spent all day yest
erday playing Bach’s Passion music, and the hours passed like a dream until my sisters came in from walking and began to talk about marriage and men. It made me feel sick — it was horrible; and it is such things that make me hate life — and I do hate it; it is the way we are brought back to earth, and forced to realise how vile and degraded we are. Society seems to me no better than a pigsty; but in the beautiful convent — that we shall, alas! never see again — it was not so. There, at least, life was pure — yes, and beautiful. Do you not remember that beautiful white church with all its white pillars and statues, and the dark-robed nuns, and the white-veiled girls, their veils falling from their bent heads? They often seemed to me like angels. I am sure that Heaven must be very much like that — pure, desireless, contemplative.”

  Amazed, Alice looked at her friend; she had never heard her speak like this before. But Cecilia did not see her; the prominent eyes of the mystic were veiled with strange glamour, and, with divine gourmandise, she savoured the ineffable sweetness of the vision, and as the sensuality of her nature revolted against the warmth of a lover’s kiss, it yielded to the cold aisle made lovely with the white body of God set in gold above the distant altar. After a long silence, she said:

  “I often wonder, Alice, how you can think as you do; and, strange to say, no one suspects that you are an unbeliever; you are so good in all except that one point.”

  “But surely, dear, it is not a merit to believe; it is hardly a thing that we can call into existence.”

  “You should pray for faith.”

  “I don’t see how I can pray if I have not faith.”

  “Oh! you argue too well for me. You are too clever; but I would ask you, Alice — you never told me — did you never believe in God, I mean when you were a little child?”

  “I suppose I must have, but, as well as I can remember, it was only in a very half-hearted way; much as I believed in hobgoblins. Belief never touched me. I could never quite bring myself to credit that there was a Being far away, sitting behind a cloud, who kept his eye on all the different worlds, and looked after them just as a stationmaster looks after the arrival and departure of trains from some huge terminus.”

  “Alice! how can you talk so? Are you not afraid that something awful might happen to you for talking of the Creator of all things in that way?”

  “Why should I be afraid, and why should that Being, if he exists, be angry with me for my sincerity? If he is allpowerful, it rests with Himself to make me believe.”

  They had now accomplished the greater part of their journey, and, a little tired, had sat down to rest on a portion of a tree left by the woodcutters. Gold rays slanted through the glades, enveloping and rounding off the tall smooth trunks that rose branchless to a height of thirty, even forty, feet; and the pink clouds, seen through the arching dome of green, were vague as the picture on some dim cathedral-roof.

  “In places like these, I wonder you don’t feel God’s presence.”

  “On the contrary, the charm of nature is broken when you introduce a ruling official.”

  “Alice! how can you — you who are so good — speak in that way?” At that moment a dead leaf rustled through the silence—” And do you think that we shall die like that leaf? That, like it, we shall become a part of the earth and be forgotten as utterly?”

  “I am afraid I do. That frail, fluttering thing was once a bud; it lived the summer-life of a leaf: now it will decay through the winter, and perhaps the next, until it finally becomes part of the earth. Everything in nature I see pursuing the same course; why should I imagine myself an exception to the general rule?”

  “What, then, is the meaning of life?”

  “Alas! we know nothing; we are perhaps no more than a lot of flies struggling in a water-jug. It is a very cruel creed. The sense of annihilation is a black, a heavy burden to bear, and no one will ever know what I have suffered. I am isolated from the rest of the world. At home I am like a stranger; I have not a thought in common with anyone.”

  “Alice, you must not cry. Am I not your friend? Yes, I am more than a friend; I cannot tell you how I love you; I do not know myself, and I often feel afraid of my love, so strange does it seem.”

  “Oh! yes, Cecilia, I know you love me, and I am thankful that I have such a friend; without you I should not be able to bear up.”

  And, their souls longing for storms, tears, relief, effusion, the girls threw their arms round each other’s necks and wept.

  This outburst of feeling had long been preparing; for days it had lain aching on their hearts. After their convent — where, in an atmosphere of general sympathy, flower-like their lives had grown — the girls had found the world cold and heartrending, and, in the severance of ties, nought but their friendship had remained. Alice had accepted it at first from pity, and then had abandoned herself, overcome by the power of an allgiving love. But they who can always accept, think little of the worth; and until now she had not even dreamed the meaning of it. A moment of effusion had revealed it. Words were unnecessary, and, intent on their happiness, absorbed in the dolorous felicities of their sensations, the girls walked onward in silence. Ideas evaporated like perfumes, and only the short sharp cry of a bird broke the mild calm of the woods.

  “Now, Alice,’’ said Cecilia, when they reached the turning that made parting inevitable, and there was something of the passion of the lover in her voice, “promise me you will come and see me soon again. You will not leave me so long, you will write; I shall not he able to live if I do not hear from you.”

  At that moment the sound of horse-hoofs was heard, and a pair of cream-coloured ponies, with a florid woman driving determinedly, came sweeping round the corner.

  “What a strange person!” said Alice, watching the blue veil and the brightly-dyed hair.

  “Don’t you know who she is?” said Cecilia; “that is your neighbour, Mrs. Lawler.”

  “Oh! is it really? I have been so long at school that I know nobody — I have been anxious to see her. Why, I wonder, do people speak of her so mysteriously?”

  “You must surely have heard that she is not visited!”

  “Well, yes; but I did not quite understand. Your father was saying something the other day about Mr. Lawler’s shooting-parties; then mamma looked at him; he laughed and spoke of ‘les colombes de Cythère.’ I intended to ask mamma what he meant, but somehow I forgot.”

  “She is one of those... they call them bad women; women that men give money to and disgrace. In the towns they walk about the streets by night.”

  “Oh! really!” said Alice; and the conversation came to a sudden pause. They had never spoken upon such a subject before, and the presence of the deformed girl rendered it a doubly painful one. In her embarrassment, Alice said:

  “Then I wonder Mr. Lawler married her. Was it his fault that — ?”

  “Oh! I don’t think so,” Cecilia replied, scornfully: “but what does it matter? — she was quite good enough for him. Men are always the worst.”

  Alice did not dare to pursue the conversation. At every moment a new Cecilia was revealing herself, the existence of whom Alice had not even suspected in the old. She knew that she herself was altered, that the last few weeks had taught her much, had strangely modified her ideas of life and things, but this was nothing to the transformation she thought she perceived in her friend. In reality Cecilia was the least changed. In her case circumstances had developed nothing; it had merely unveiled a state of soul that had existed for years in its present condition; and Alice, as she hurried home, wondered if the minds of the other girls were the same as they were at school. She confessed she could see but little change in her sister: May she had scarcely spoken to since they left school, and Violet she had not met since they parted at Athenry for their different homes. “When she entered the house she heard Olive talking:

  “He said, mamma, that I would be the handsomest girl at the drawing-room.”

  “And what did you say, dear?”

  “I asked him
how he knew; was that right?”

  “Quite right, and what did he say then?”

  “He said, because he had never seen anybody so handsome, and as he had seen everybody in London, he supposed — I forget the exact words, but they were very nice, I am sure he admired my new hat; but you — you haven’t told me how you liked it. Do you think I should wear it down on my eyes, or a bit back?”

  “I think it very becoming as it is; but tell me more about Captain Hibbert.”

  “He told me he was coming to meet us at mass; you know he is a Roman Catholic.”

  “I know he is, dear, and am very glad.”

  “If he weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to meet us at mass.”

  At this proof of the superiority of Catholic over other forms of worship Mrs. Barton laughed, and, when Alice came downstairs, the Captain Hibbert discussion was being continued in the studio. According to old-established custom, on the arrival of his family, Arthur had turned his nudities to the wall, and now sitting, one leg tucked under him, on the sofa, throwing back from time to time his long blonde locks, he hummed an Italian air.