Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  An hour passed: perspiration had begun to loosen the work of the curling-tongs; dust bad thickened the voices, but the joy of exercise was in every head and limb. A couple would rush off for a cup of tea, or an ice, and then, pale and breathless, return to the fray. Mrs. Manly was the gayest. Pushing her children out of her skirts, she called upon May:

  “Now then, May, have you got a partner? We are going to have a real romp — we are going to have Kitchen Lancers. I’ll undertake to see everybody through them.”

  A select few, by signs, winks, and natural instinct, were drawn towards this convivial circle; but, notwithstanding all her efforts to make herself understood, Mrs. Manly was sadly hampered by the presence of a tub-like old lady who, with a small boy, was seeking a vis-à-vis.

  “My dear May, we can’t have her here, we are going to romp, anyone can see that. Tell her we are going to dance Kitchen Lancers.”

  But the old lady could not be made to understand, and it was with difficulty that she was disentangled from the sixteen. At that moment the appearance of a waiter with a telegram caused the dancers to pause. Mr. Burke’s name was whispered in front of the messenger; but he who, until that evening, had been Mr. Burke, was now the Marquis of Kilcarney. The smiling mouth drooped to an expression of fear as he tore open the envelope. One glance was enough; he looked about the room like one dazed; then, as his eyes fell upon the vague faces seen looking through the wet November pane, he muttered. “Oh! you brutes! you brutes! so you have shot my brother!”

  Unchecked, the harper twanged and the fiddler scraped out the tune of their lancers. Few really knew what had happened, and the newly-made marquis had to fight his way through women who, in skin-tight dresses, danced with wantoning movements of the hips, and threw themselves into the arms of men to be, in true kitchen-fashion, whirled round and round with prodigious violence.

  Nevertheless, Lord Dungory and Lord Rosshill could not conceal their annoyance; both felt keenly that they had compromised themselves by remaining in the room after the news of so dreadful a catastrophe. But, as Mrs. Barton was anxious that her daughter’s success should not be interfered with, nothing could be done but to express sympathy in appropriate words. Nobody, Lord Dungory declared, could regret the dastardly outrage that had been committed more than he. He had known Lord Kilcarney many years, and he had always found him a man whom no one could fail to esteem. the earldom was one of the oldest in Ireland, but the marquisate did not go back further than the last few years. Beaconsfield had given him a step in the peerage; no one knew why. Most curious man — most retiring — hated society. Then Lord Rosshill related an anecdote concerning an enormous water-jump that he and Lord Kilcarney had taken together; and he also spoke of the late Marquis’s aversion to matrimony, and hinted that he had once refused a match which would have relieved the estates of all debt. But he could not be persuaded; indeed, he had never been known to pay any woman the slightest attention.

  “It is to be hoped the present Marquis won’t prove so difficult to please,” said Mrs. Gould. The remark was an unfortnate one, and the chaperons present resented this violation of then’ secret thoughts. Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Scully suddenly withdrew their eyes, which till then had been gently following their daughters through the figures of the dance, and, forgetting what they foresaw would be the cause of future enmity, united in condemning Mrs. Gould. Obeying a glance of the Lady Hamilton eyes, Lord Dungory said:

  “On cherche l’amour dans les boudoirs, non pas dans les cimetières, madame.” Then he added (but this time only for the private ear of Mrs. Barton): “La mer ne rend passes morts, mais la tombe nous donne souvent les écussons.”

  “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Mrs. Barton, “ce Milord, il trouve l’esprit partout;” and her light coaxing laugh dissipated this moment of ballroom gloom.

  And Alice? Although conscious of her deficiency in the trois temps, determined not to give in without an effort, she had allowed May to introduce her to a couple of officers; but to execute the step she knew theoretically, or to talk to her partner when he had dragged her, breathless, out of the bumping dances, she found to be equally impossible. Too clearly did she see that he thought her a plain girl, too keenly did she feel that, knowing nothing of hunting or of London theatres, and having read only one book of Ouida’s, it would be vain for her to hope to interest him. An impassable gulf yawned between his ideas and hers. Yet everyone else seemed happy as building birds. Behind screens, under staircases, at the end of dark passages, there were cooing couples. Girls she had known at St. Leonards as incapable of learning, or even understanding the simplest lessons, seemed suddenly to have grown bright, clever, agreeable — capable, in a word, of fulfilling that only duty which falls to the lot of women: of amusing men. But she could not do this, and must, therefore, resign herself to an aimless life of idleness, and be content in a few years to take a place amid the Miss Brennans, the Ladies Cullen, the Miss Duffys, the Honourable Miss Gores, whom she saw sitting round the walls “waiting to be asked,” as did the women in the old Babylonian Temple.

  Such was the attitude of Alice’s mind as she sat wearily answering Mrs. Gould’s tiresome questions, not daring to approach her mother, who was laughing with Olive, Captain Hibbert, and Lord Dungory. Waltz after waltz had been played, and her ears reeked with their crying strain. One or two men had asked her “if they might have the pleasure;” but she was determined to try dancing no more, and had refused them. At last, at the earnest request of Mrs. Gould, she had allowed Dr. Reed to take her in to supper. He was an earnest-eyed, stout, commonplace man, and looked some years over thirty. Alice, however, found she could get on with him better than with her other partners, and when they left the clattering supper-room, where plates were being broken and champagne being drunk by the gallon, sitting on the stairs, he talked to her till voices were heard calling for his services. A dancer had been thrown and had broken his leg. Alice saw something carried towards her, and, rushing towards May, whom she saw in the doorway, she asked for an explanation.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing! he slipped down — has broken or sprained his ankle — that’s all. Why aren’t you dancing? Greatest fun in the world — just beginning to get noisy — and we are going it. Come on, Fred; come on!”

  To the rowdy tune of the Posthorn polka the different couples were dashing to and fro — all a little drunk with emotion and champagne. As if fascinated, the eye followed the shoulders of a tall, florid-faced man. Doing the deux temps, in two or three prodigious jumps he traversed the room. His partner, a tiny creature, looked a crushed bird within the circle of his terrible arm. Like a collier labouring in a heavy sea, a county doctor lurched from side to side, overpowered by the fattest of the Miss Duffys. A thin, trim youth, with bright eyes glancing hither and thither, executed a complex step, and glided with surprising dexterity in and out, and through this rushing mad mass of light toilettes and flying coat-tails. Marks, too, of conflict were visible. Mr. Ryan had lost some portion of his garment in an obscure misunderstanding in the supper-room. All Mr. Lynch’s studs had gone, and his shirt was in a precarious state; drunken Sir Richard had not been carried out of the room before strewing the floor with his necktie and fragments of his gloves. But, in the intense excitement, these details were forgotten. The harper twanged still more violently at his strings, the fiddler rasped out the agonising tune more screechingly than ever; and as the delirium of the dance fevered this horde of well-bred people the desire to exercise their animal force grew irresistible, and they charged, intent on each other’s overthrow. In the onset, the vast shoulders and the deux temps were especially successful. One couple had gone down splendidly before him, another had fallen over the prostrate ones; and in a moment, in positions more or less recumbent, eight people were on the floor. Fears were expressed for the tight dresses, and Violet had shown more of her thin ankles than was desirable; but the climax was not reached until a young man, whose unsteady legs forbade him this part of the fun, established himself in a safe corner,
and commenced to push the people over as they passed him. This was the signal for the flight of the chaperons.

  “Now come along, Miss Barton,” cried Mrs. Barton, catching sight of Alice; “and will you, Lord Dungory, look after Olive?” Lord Rosshill collected the five Honourable Miss Gores, the Miss Brennans drew around Mrs. Scully, who, without taking the least notice of them, steered her way.

  And so ended, at least so far as they were concerned, the ball given by the spinsters of the county of Galway. But the real end? On this subject much curiosity was evinced.

  The secret was kept for a time, but eventually they learned that, overcome by the recollections of still pleasanter evenings spent under the hospitable roof of the Mayo bachelor, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Lynch and Sir Charles had brought in the maid-servants, and that, with jigs for waltzes, and whiskey for champagne, the gaiety had not been allowed to die until the day was well begun. Bit by bit and fragment by fragment the story was pieced together, and, in the secrecy of their bedrooms, with little smothered fits of laughter, the young ladies told each other how Sir Charles had danced with the big housemaid, how every time he did the cross over he had slapped her on the stomach; and then, with more laughter they related how she had said: “Now don’t, Sir Charles, I forbid you to take such liberties.” And it also became part of the story that, when they were tired of even such pleasures as these, the gentlemen had gone upstairs to where the poor man with the broken leg was lying, and had, with whiskey and song, relieved his sufferings until the Galway train rolled into Ballinasloo,

  CHAPTER VI.

  AFTER THE BALL at Ballinasloe, the county people saw very little of each other. The summer had been prolonged into autumn, but now, for whole days together, the rain came down persistently; the green pasture-lands seemed as if they were going to be washed into the brown bogs, and the blue of the Clare mountains was rarely seen through the drifting grey of the mists. But the weather rarely prevents Galway from enjoying itself; there were graver reasons for the seclusion in which the county lay buried. Mr. Forster’s Coercion Bill had failed. Seven hundred people, including many members of Parliament, had been thrown into prison; wild arrests were made in every town and village; but as each fresh ring was cut, like some fabulous dragon, the Land League put forth ten, and in the humid Irish winter it grew in strength, winding itself steadily between the classes, momentarily drawing all within its power. Even hunting had ceased to be talked of. The poisoned covers, the shrieking mobs that bad attended the last meets and had stoned the red horsemen into flight, were gloomily alluded to; and the good old days were remembered, with hardly a hope that them like would ever be seen again.

  The air was filled with threats, murder, and rumours of many murders. Land League meetings were held in every town, in every village, and rustic orators fearlessly proclaimed the extermination of the owners of the soil. Each post brought letters marked with coffins and crossbones, or almost equally melancholy epistles from agents, declaring that the law was in abeyance, that whole armies of people assembled to prevent the bailiffs from serving their notices of eviction. Some of them had been thrown into lakes, others had been dragged out of their beds and shot in the legs, for daring to disregard the occult law that from Seventy-nine to Eighty-two governed the island. It was a time of darkness and constant alarms. It was by night that prosperous tenants and leaseholders paid their rents; the reductions that the League demanded often amounted to the entire balance coming to the mortgaged landowners: and they saw themselves deprived of them only means of existence. For how many generations had they lived upon the taxed soil? For how long, when other industries bad failed, had they laughed and said: “The fools! there is nothing litre the land; all else fails, but that cannot be taken away.” And now they saw that which they had taken to be eternal, vanishing from them even as a vapour. An entire race, a whole caste, saw themselves driven out of their soft, warm couches of idleness, and forced into the struggle for life. The prospect appalled them; birds with shorn wings could not gaze more helplessly on the high trees where they had built, as they thought, their nests out of the reach of evil winds. What could they do with their empty brains? What could they do with their feeble hands? Like an avenging spirit, America rose above the horizon of their vision, and the plunge into its shadowy arms threatened, terrified them now, as it had terrified the famine-stricken peasants of Forty-nine.

  The landlords were divided by conflicting interests. Those whose estates were encumbered with mortgages were for holding out, but the majority, who had debts to meet, found themselves forced to agree to the League’s demands; and, for fear of drawing attention on themselves individually, they shrank from meeting in council, and declined to adopt any common course of defence. The suddenness of the attack and the unity of the combination took from them all strength to resist; and, helplessly wailing by their firesides, every morning they read aloud the articles in the Daily Express, calling on the Government to pass Coercion Bills, and force the people to pay them just debts. Would the Government come to their assistance? This was the question that burned in every brain; it was the pulse of every hour; and, with avid eyes, each fragment of news was read, until at last the interest was reversed, and the leaders of the agitation hailed murder with less delight than the landlords, who now saw in each fresh outrage a means of forcing the Government to protect their jeopardised fortunes. What would Parliament do for them when it met? was asked unceasingly; and, listening to long lamentations and cries for help, the girls lived wearily. On their young hearts the shadow of calamity fell lightly; and they dreamed unflinchingly of their white dresses, while the island rocked with the roar of five million peasants claiming the light to own the land that they tilled.

  As elsewhere, life at Brookfield was filled with forebodings. During breakfast Mrs. Barton did not cease to advise her husband as to the course he should pursue with his tenants should they refuse his last offer of twenty per cent, abatement. But, when Milord arrived, the little table was drawn forward, the glass of sherry poured out, and, just as if rents were being punctually paid, white hands were waved, and the coaxing laugh began to dissipate the gloom in which the League usually draped the morning hours. The ancient lovers sat together on the sofa, undisturbed by the recurring vision of the four policemen who faced the sweep in front of the house, or the tinkling of Mr. Barton’s guitar, which was heard when the servant opened the door to announce that luncheon was ready.

  Olive complained, and she often begged of her mother to leave the country. Mrs. Barton could not do this; but when Captain Hibbert returned from London she allowed him to continue his flirtation. She did so partly to give Olive an occupation, partly that she might perfect herself in the art of amusing gentlemen — an accomplishment that would be required of her when they met the Lord Kilcarney at the Castle. For Mrs. Barton had decided that her daughter was to be a marchioness; she did not doubt but the web of love that was being woven would be disentangled without difficulty when the time came; and Olive sat for hours knitting purses, working embroidered smoking-caps, and laughing and talking with Barnes. But for Alice there was nothing. On leaving school she had hoped that all jealousies would be lost in the uniting intimacies of home, and that she would live in the assurance of a sister’s love. A vain dream! Worldly necessities and ambitions had torn them irrevocably apart. In the bright summer-days when the country was lovely and sweet with sunshine, when there were visits and tennis-parties, she had only seen the shadow of the dreary truth flitting by her; but now, with its face of implacable horror, it stood ever by her, with its cold eyes staring into her very soul. In the bleak winter noons, sitting with some wearying novel fallen on her knees, listening to the swishing of the long rain, or looking out on the blank snow-laden country, with its sepulchral mountains disappearing in the grey masses of cloud that the evening, like winding-sheets, slowly and silently unrolled, she realised, seeing all along the far-reaching range of consequences, that she was no more than a plain girl, whom no man would care to marry, a
nd who would have to live without any aim or object in life, an ever-increasing burden to her people, an object of derision to her acquaintances.

  For days, for weeks, for months past, all she had seen or heard had forced the girl to gaze longer and more minutely in the face of this stern fact, and in its ever-varying expression she found new cruelties; the store seemed to be inexhaustible. She was, above all, alone, terribly alone; to none could she turn for a look or a word of comfort. Her mother was alien to her in all feelings and ideas of things; her father and sister? they were very kind, but there was no use in thinking of them now. She was alone, oh! yes, terribly alone. Her heart was a desert; its solitude affrighted her, and she cried out in her anguish. Thoughts that scorched, desires she could not control, persecuted her, and so persistently that, at last, they seemed part and parcel of her habitual thought; and she was shaken with sudden and quick revulsions of feeling. “Was she never to know? Was this life of weak idleness to continue for ever? These were the questions that, with a terrible intensity and unintermission of appeal, presented themselves to her mind.