Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “You’ll promise to be very good, and you won’t stop more than five minutes.”

  The words were spoken in low soft tones, exquisitely expressive of the overthrow of reason and the merging of all the senses in the sweet abandonment of passion.

  Alice sat unable to move; she was trembling like a bird held to a man’s breast. At last, awakening with a pained look in her grey eyes, she touched Harding’s hand with hers, and, laying her finger on her lips, she arose. Their footfalls made no sound on the deep soft carpet; they stole away unperceived.

  “This is very terrible,” she murmured, half to herself. Harding had too much tact to answer; and, taking advantage of the appearance of Violet Scully, who came walking gaily down the room on the Marquis’s arm, he said —

  “Your friend Miss Scully seems to be in high spirits.” Violet exchanged smiles with Alice as she passed. The smile was one of triumph. She had waltzed three times with the Marquis, and was now going to sit out a set of quadrilles.

  “What a beautiful waltz the ‘Blue Danube’ is!” she said, leading her admirer to where the blue fans were numerous. Upon the glistening piano stood a pot filled with white azaleas; and, in the pauses of the conversation, you heard the glass of the chandeliers tinkling gently to the vibration of the music.

  “It is a beautiful waltz when I am dancing it with you.”

  “I am sure you say that to every girl you dance with.”

  “No, I should not know how to say so to anyone but you,” said the little man humbly; and so instinct were the words with truth that the girl, in the violence of her emotion, fancied her heart had ceased to beat.

  “But you have not known me a fortnight,” she answered involuntarily.

  “But that doesn’t matter; the moment I saw you, I — I — liked you. It is so easy to know the people we — like; we know it at once; at least I do.”

  She was more self-possessed than he, but the words “Am I — am I going to be a marchioness?” throbbed like a burning bullet sunk into the very centre of her forehead. And to maintain her mental equipoise she was forced, though by doing so she felt she was jeopardising her chances, to coquette with him. After a long silence she said —

  “Oh, do you think we know at first sight the people we like? Do you believe in first impressions?”

  “My first and last impressions of you are always the same. All I know is, that when you are present all things are bright, beautiful, and cheering, and when you are away I don’t much care what happens. Now, these Castle balls used to bore me to death last year; I used to go into a back room and fall asleep, but this year I am as lively as a kitten — I think I could go on for ever, and the Castle seems to me the most glorious place on earth. I used to hate it; I was as had as Parnell, but not for the same reasons, of course. Now I am only afraid he will have his way, and they’ll shut the whole place up. Anyhow, even if they do, I shall always look back upon this season as a very happy time.”

  “But you do not really think that Parnell will be allowed to have his way?” said Violet, inadvertently.

  “I don’t know, I don’t take much interest in politics, but I believe things are going terribly to the had. Dublin, they say, is undermined with secret societies, and the murder that was committed the other day in Sackville Street was the punishment they inflict on those whom they even remotely suspect of being informers.”

  “But don’t you think the Government will soon be obliged to step in and put an end to all this kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know; I’m afraid they’ll do nothing until we landlords are all irretrievably ruined.”

  Violet’s thin face contracted. She had introduced a subject that might prevent him from ever proposing to her. She knew how terribly the Kilcarney estates were mortgaged; and, even now, as she rightly conjectured, the poor little man was inwardly trembling at the folly it had been on his lips to speak. Three of his immediate ancestors had married penniless girls, and it was well-known that another love match would precipitate the property over that precipice known to every Irish landowner — the Encumbered Estates Court. But those exquisitely shapen temples, so exquisitely shaded with light brown tresses, that delicately moulded head — delicate as an Indian carven ivory, dispelled all shadows and fears and waxed the sole, the omnipotent and omnipresent desire of his life.

  She thought not of the renunciation she was making of love and passion. Her mind was blank to all but one desire, and in the nervous sensitivity of the moment, will, conscious and unconscious, became one, and the violent emotion of expectancy produced the phenomenon of involuntary, although intelligent action. The girl obeyed an unconscious conception, that is to say an instinct, and uttered the precise words that the occasion demanded:

  “But things never turn out as well or as badly as we expect them to.”

  This facile philosophy went like wine to the little marquis’s head. He longed to throw himself at the feet of his goddess and thank her for the balm she had poured upon him. The gloom of approaching ruin disappeared, and he saw nothing in the world but a white tulle skirt, a thin foot, a thin bosom, and a pair of bright grey eyes. Vaguely he sought for equivalent words, but loud-talking dancers passed into the room. In arid and vulgar curiosity they stared at the couple sitting under the azaleas; and, abashed by their looks, the marquis broke off a flowering branch and said, stammering the while incoherently:

  “Will you keep this in memory of this evening?”

  Violet thrust the flowers into her bosom, and was about to thank him, when an A.D.C. came up and claimed her for the dance. Coldly she told him he was mistaken, that she was engaged; and, taking Lord Kilcarney’s arm, they made their way in silence back to the ball-room.

  On the whole, Violet was satisfied; she felt now very sure of her marquis, and, as they approached Mrs. Scully, a quick glance said that things were going as satisfactorily as could be desired. Not daring to trust herself to the gossip of the chaperons, this excellent lady sat apart, maintaining the solitary dignity to which the Galway counter had accustomed her; and she received the marquis with the same smile as she used to bestow on her best customers. He sat beside Violet. They talked for a few minutes of the different aspects of the ball-room, of their friends, of things that did not interest them. Then she said winsomely, affecting an accent of command that enchanted him:

  “Now I want you to go and dance with someone else; let me see — what do you say to Olive Barton? If you don’t, I shall be in her mother’s black books for the rest of my life. Now go. We shall be at home to-morrow; you might come in for tea.”

  The marquis declared he would be delighted, and, suffocated with secret joy, he made his way across the room to where Mrs. Barton was sitting. He was received with waves of the white hands and an abundance of laughter. Mrs. Barton was too wise to show her disappointment, and, cancelling a couple of Olive’s engagements, she sent her off to dance with him.

  Violet sat by her mother, refusing all her partners; but, when “God save the Queen” was played, she accepted Lord Kilcarney’s arm, and they pressed forward to see the Lord-

  Lieutenant and Her Excellency pass down the room. Violet’s eyes feasted on the bowing black coats and light toilettes, and, leaning on her escutcheon, she dreamed vividly of the following year when she would take her place amid all these noble people, and, as high as they, stand a peeress on the dai’s. This moment of vision was the keenest pleasure in her life: and so ended the ball.

  As the Bartons drove through the wet and forlorn streets of Dublin, Olive said:

  “Did you notice, mamma, how often that beast of a girl, Violet Scully, danced with Lord Kilcarney?”

  “I don’t think he danced oftener with her than he did with you, dear,” Mrs. Barton answered, a little wearily. “It would not look well if he remained with you the whole night.” And, weary of the racket of music, wine, and gaslight, the women gazed through the misted windows. The city lay mysteriously dead — immovable and mute beneath the moon, like a starved
vagrant in the last act of a melodrama.

  To be alone, to lie down, to forget. She had too much to think of; to-morrow she would think of it all, but now she was tired and wanted rest. But for Alice there was no rest that night. Her brain was on fire with what she had seen and heard. It seemed to her as if she had lived through a hundred years; and, as she lay under the sheets, all the old sorrows came as a river, rushing through the darkness. She was but a poor plain girl whom no one would ever marry, a, poor plain girl who saw her little hopes wrecked daily before her despairing eyes, whose fine feelings were daily brutalised by those with whom she was, and would ever be, forced to live. And to think, to know — ah! yes, to know — that the world, the fair beauteous world, with all its adventures, possibilities, and achievements, would — must — remain to her for ever a blank; and through no fault of her own, but because she was but a poor plain girl whom no one would ever think of marrying!

  Seen from afar all things in nature are of equal worth; and the nearest things, when viewed with the eyes of God, are raised to those heights of tragic awe which conventionality would limit to the death of kings or patriots. The history of a nation as often lies hidden in social wrongs and domestic griefs as in the story of revolution, and if it be for the historian to narrate the one, it is for the novelist to dissect and explain the other; and who would say which is of the most vital importance — the thunder of the people against the oppression of the Castle, or the unnatural sterility, the cruel idleness of mind and body of the muslin martyrs who cover with their white skirts the shames of Cork Hill?

  Alice knew well that Harding would not marry her, but the knowledge did not lessen her terror of losing him, or her fear of the lonely monotony of girl-life that would again close in upon her. And to think that never, never, never, would any door of escape be open to her! And to think that the fair world with all its adventures and aspirations would never, never be known to her, would remain the thinnest of thin dreams. And why? But unlike the night when, before the snow-drowned plain, she cried out against the silence of spinsterhood and all its manifold meanings, she now thought she would be content if things could only remain unchanged. Before, she had demanded marriage as a right, but love was then an abstract passion, now it was a distinct desire possessing for her an intrinsic value. And little as it was characteristic of her to reproach, she now reproached him. Why, oh why, had he been so kind when he must have known from the beginning that all must end! and then, suddenly as lightning seal’s the face of night, a burning thought of May Gould tore the veil of grief.

  * * * * *

  Was there no other way to retain your lover? Was Cecilia light, and did a man care for you for nothing else?

  * * * * *

  Still what matter? May, at least, was not lonely and friendless; she, at least, would know what the rest of them might never know!

  These thoughts were awakened into consciousness by the action of nervous passion; and, astonished, Alice raised her head, finding within herself no will for the idea. She buried her face in the pillow as if to escape from the impure thoughts with which she was unwittingly assailed.

  * * * * * *

  But, oh, the punishment and the shame! Her brain reeled, Oh, the terrible drama that was being enacted! How far away? Only a few yards: only a little lath and plaster separated them. Could nothing be done to save, to avert? Alas, nothing — always the same answer: she was only a plain girl who could do nothing but endure.

  CHAPTER V.

  “SO YOU COULDN’T manage to keep him after all, my lady? When did he leave the hotel?”

  “Mr. Harding left Dublin last Monday week.”

  Alice wondered if her mother hated her; if she did not, it was difficult to account for the bitterness and the cruelty of her words. This was to the girl a great grief. She did not suspect that Mrs. Barton was a loving and affectionate mother, who would sacrifice herself for one child almost as readily as for the other. In each of us there are traits that the chances of life have never revealed; and though she would have sat by the bedside, even if Alice were stricken with typhoid fever, Mrs. Barton recoiled spitefully like a cat before the stern rectitudes of a nature so dissimilar from her own; and then the feline claws would appear through the soft velvet paws. Olive, on the contrary, she had fashioned according to her guise, and all the cajolery which had been employed in the last twenty years, and we know with what triumphant success, was thrust upon the girl for buckler and spear. She was now but a pale copy of her mother: all the affectation had been faithfully reproduced, but the charm of the original had evaporated like a perfume. It would be rash to say that Mrs. Barton did not see that the weapons which had proved so deadly in her hands were worthless and ineffectual in her daughter’s: but twenty years of elegant harlotry had blunted her finer perceptions, and now the grossest means of pushing Olive and the marquis morally and physically into each other’s arms seemed to her the best. Alice was to her but a plain girl, whose misfortune was that she had ever been born. This idea had grown up with Mrs. Barton, and fifteen years ago she had seen in the child’s face the spinster of fifty. But since the appearance of Harding, and the manifest interest he had shown in her daughter, Mrs. Barton’s convictions that Alice would never be able to find a husband Lad been somewhat shaken, and she had almost concluded that it would be as well — for there was no knowing what men’s tastes were — to give her a chance. Nor was the dawning fancy dispelled by the fact that Harding had not proposed, and the cutting words she had addressed to the girl were the result of the nervous irritation caused by the marked attention the marquis was paying Violet Scully.

  For, like Alice, Mrs. Barton never lived long in a fool’s paradise, and she now saw that the battle was going against her, and would most assuredly be lost unless a determined effort was made. And she also delayed not a moment in owning to herself that she had committed a mistake in going to the Shelbourne Hotel. Had she taken a house in Mount Street or Fitzwilliam Place, she could have had all the best men from the barracks continually at her house. But at the hotel she was helpless; there were too many people about, too many beasts of women criticising her conduct. Mrs. Barton had given two dinner-parties in a private room hired for the occasion; but these dinners could scarcely be called successful. On one occasion they had seven men to dinner, and as some half-dozen more turned in in the evening, it became necessary to send down to the ladies’ drawing-room for partners. Bertha Duffy and the girl in red of course responded to the call, but they had rendered everything odious by continuous vulgarity and brogue. Then other mistakes had been made. A charity costume ball had been advertised. It was to be held in the Rotunda. An imposing list of names headed the prospectus, and it was confidently stated that all the lady patronesses would attend. Mrs. Barton fell into the trap, and, to her dismay, found herself and her girls in the company of the rag, tag, and bobtail of Catholic Dublin: Bohemian girds fabricated out of bedcurtains, negro minstrels that an application of grease and burnt cork had brought into a filthy existence. And from the single gallery that encircled this tomb-like building, the small tradespeople looked down upon the multicoloured crowd that strove to dance through the mud that a late Land League meeting had left upon the floor; and through the yellow glare of the gas the grey dust fell steadily into the dancers’ eyes and into the sloppy tea distributed at counter’s placed here and there like coffee-stands in the public street.

  “I never felt so low in my life,” said the lady who always brought back an A.D.C. from the Castle, and the phrase was cited afterwards as being admirably descriptive of the fête.

  When it became known that the Bartons had been present at this ball, that the beauty had been seen dancing with the young Catholic nobodies, their names were struck off the lists, and they were asked to no more private dances at the Castle. Lord Dungory was sent to interview the Chamberlain, but that official could promise nothing. Mrs. Barton’s hand was therefore forced. It was obligatory upon her to have some place where she could entertain offic
ers; the Shelbourne did not lend itself to that purpose. Mrs. Barton hired a house in Mount Street, one that possessed a polished floor admirably suited to dancing.

  Then she threw off the mask, and pirate-like, regardless of the laws of chaperons, resolved to carry on the war as she thought proper. She’d have done once and for ever with those beasts of women who abused and criticised her. Henceforth she would shut her door against them all, and it would only be open to men — young men for her daughters, elderly men for herself. At four o’clock in the afternoon the entertainment began. Light refreshments, consisting of tea, claret, biscuits, and cigarettes, were laid out in the dining-room. Having partaken, the company, consisting of three colonels and some half-dozen subalterns, went up-stairs to the drawing-room. And in recognition of her flirtation with Harding, a young man replaced Alice at the piano, and for half-a-crown an hour supplied, the necessary music.

  Bound and round the girls went, passing in turn out of the arms of an old into those of a young man, and back again. If they stayed their feet for a moment, Mrs. Barton glided across the floor, and, with insinuating gestures and intonations of voice, would beg of them to continue. She declared that it was la grâce et la beauté, &c. The merriment did not cease until half-past sis. Some of the company then left, and some few were detained for dinner. A new pianist and fresh officers arrived about nine o’clock, and dancing was continued until one or two in the morning. To yawning subalterns the house in Mount Street seemed at first like a little paradise. The incessant dancing was considered fatiguing, but there were interludes in which claret was drunk, cigarettes smoked, and loose conversation permitted in the dining-room.

  Then the dinners! Mrs. Barton’s dinners are worthy of special study. Her circle of acquaintances being limited, the same guests were generally found at her table. Lord Dungory always sat next to her. He displayed his old-fashioned shirt-front, his cravat, his studs, his urbanity, his French epigram. Rosshill sat opposite him; he was thin, melancholy, aristocratic, silent, and boring. There was a captain who, since he had left the army, had grown to the image of a butler, and an ashen-tinted young man who wore his arm in a sling, and an old man who looked like a dirty and worn-out broom; and who put his arm round the backs of the chairs. These and three A.D.C.s made up the party. There was very little talking, and what there was was generally confined to asking the young ladies if they had been to the Castle, and if they liked dancing. Mr. Barton, who had just returned from Holland, was full of strange views concerning Dutch art, and a still stranger plan for defending his country in ease of invasion.