by George Moore
“DARLING ALICE, —
“Thanks a thousand times for your last letter, and the money enclosed. It came in the nick of time, for I was run almost to my last penny. I did not write before, because I didn’t feel in the humour to do anything. Thank goodness I’m not sick any more, though I don’t know that it isn’t counterbalanced by the dreadful faintness and the constant movement. Isn’t it awful to sit hero day after day watching myself, and knowing the only relief I shall get will be after such terrible pain? I woke up last night crying with the terror of it. Cervassi says there are cases on record of painless confinements, and in my best moods I think mine is to be one of them. I know it is awfully wrong to write all these things to a good girl like you, but I think talking about it is part of the complaint; and poor sinner me has no one to talk to. Do you remember my old black cashmere? I’ve been altering it till there’s hardly a bit of the original body left; but now the skirt is adding to my troubles by getting shorter and shorter in front. It is now quite six inches off the ground, and instead of fastening it I have to pin the placket-hole and then it falls nearly right... Don’t tell me you will send me the money to buy myself anything new, because, much as I have done, miserable degraded wretch though I be, I can yet appreciate what I am costing you in all ways, and I don’t want to add to it. Only three weeks longer, and then... But there, I won’t look forward, because I know I am going to die... and all the accounting for it, and everything else, will be on your shoulders. Good-bye, dear, I shan’t write again, at least not till afterwards; and if there is an afterward, I shall never be able to thank you properly; but still I think it will be a weight off you. Is it so, dear? do you wish I were dead? I know you don’t. It was unkind to write that last line: I will scratch it out. You will not be angry, dear. I am too wretched to know what I am writing, and I want to lie down.
“Yours affectionately, “MAY GOULD.”
Outside the air was limpid with sunlight, and the newly-mown meadow was golden in the light of evening. The autumn-coloured foliage of the chestnuts lay mysteriously rich and still, harmonising in measured tones with the ruddy tints of the dim September sunset. The country dozed as if satiated with summer love. Heavy scents were abroad — the pungent odours of the aftermath. A high baritone voice broke the languid silence, and, in embroidered smoking-jacket and cap, Mr. Barton twanged his guitar. Milord had been thrown down amid the hay; and Mrs. Barton and Olive, with much silvery laughter, and much waving of white hands, were showering it upon him. The old gentleman’s legs were in the air.
Crushing the letter, Alice’s hands fell on the table; she burst into tears. But work was more vital than tears, and, taking up her pen, she continued her story — penny journal fiction of true love and unending happiness in the end. A month later she received this note:
“DEAREST, —
“Just a line in pencil — I mustn’t sit up — to tell you it is all over, and all I said was, “Thank God! thank God!” over and over again, as each pain went. It is such a relief; but I mustn’t write much. It is such a funny screwed-up looking baby, and I don’t feel any of those maternal sentiments that you read about — at least not yet. And it always cries just when I am longing to go to sleep. Thank you again and again for all you have done for me and been to me. I feel awfully weak.
“Yours affectionately, “MAY GOULD.”
CHAPTER III.
THEN ALICE HEARD that the baby was dead, and that a little money would be required to bury it. Another effort was made; the money was sent: and the calm of the succeeding weeks was only disturbed by an uneasy desire to see May back in Galway, and hear her say that her terrible secret was over and done with for ever. One day she was startled by a quick trampling of feet in the corridor, and May rushed into the room. She threw herself into Alice’s arms and kissed her with effusion, with tears. The girls looked at each other long and nervously. One was pale and over-worn, her spare figure was buttoned into a faded dress, and her hair was rolled into a plain knot. The other was superb with health, and her face was full of rose-bloom. She was handsomely dressed in green velvet, and her copper hair flamed and flashed beneath a small bonnet with mauve strings.
“Oh, Alice, how tired and pale you look! You have been working too hard, and all for me. How can I thank you? I shall never be able to thank you... but believe me, it makes me so unhappy... I cannot find words to tell you how grateful I am — but I am grateful, Alice... indeed I am.”
“I am sure you are, dear. I did my best for you, it is true; and thank heaven I succeeded, and no one knows... I do not think that anyone even suspects.”
“No, not a soul. We managed it very well, didn’t we, dear? And the reverend mother behaved splendidly — she just took the view that you said she would, She saw that no good would come of telling mamma about me when I made her understand that if a word were said my misfortune would be belled all over the country in double-quick time. But, Alice dear, I had a terrible time of it; two months waiting in that horrible little lodging, afraid to go out for fear someone would recognise me; it was awful. And often I hadn’t enough to eat, for when you are in that state you can’t eat everything, and I was afraid to spend any money. You did your best to keep me supplied, dear, good guardian angel that you are.” Then the impulsive girl flung herself on Alice’s shoulders, and kissed her. “But there were times when I was hard up, oh, much more hard up than you thought I was; for I didn’t tell you everything: if I had you would have worried yourself into your grave. Oh, I had a frightful time of it! If one is married one is petted and consoled and encouraged, but alone in a lonely lodging — oh, it was frightful.”
“And what about the poor baby?” said Alice, whose disappointment rose like an acid odour to her head.
“Oh, isn’t it dreadful of me? I was forgetting all about it. The poor little thing died, as I wrote you, about ten days after it was horn. I nursed it; and I was so sorry for it. I really was; but of course... well it seems a hard thing to say — but I don’t know what I should have done with it if it had lived. Life isn’t so happy, is it, even under the best of circumstances?”
Alice hit her lips. She was beset with dark and painful emotions, and words failing her, the conversation came to a sudden close. At last the nervous silence that intervened was broken by May:
“We were speaking about money. I will repay you all I owe you some day, Alice dear. I will save up all the money I can get out of mother. She is such a dear old thing, but I cannot understand her; not a penny did she send me for the first six weeks, and then she sent me £25; and it was lucky she did, for the doctor’s bill was something tremendous. And I bought this dress and bonnet with what was left... I ought to have repaid you first thing; but I forgot it until I had ordered the dress.”
“I assure you it does not matter, May; I shall never take the money from you. If I did, it would take away all the pleasure I have had in serving you.”
“Oh, but I will insist, Alice dear, I could not think of such a thing. But there’s no use in discussing that point until I get the money.... Tell me, what do you think of my bonnet?”
“I think it very nice indeed; and I never saw you looking better.”
When May left the room Alice felt her despair growing thicker; it descended upon her gloomily, silently. Was this all she had worked for, was this all she had striven for? She had attained her end, but, oh, how trivial it appeared when compared with the terrible anxiety that had gone to achieve it. And, without pausing to consider if she were right, her soul revolted from accepting as an adequate result of her sufferings this somewhat gross picture of satisfaction. And is it not ever so? Does not the inevitable grossness of those who fight in the outward battle always jar the pensive sadness of others who see life from a distance as a faintly drawn landscape veiled in delicate twilight, and whose victories are won over themselves rather than over circumstances and opponents?
And in her present mood the fresh colour, the new dress and bonnet, the triumphant air, were infinit
ely painful and repellent to Alice. She could not rid herself of a sense of injustice done, nor could she avoid seeing that it was she, and not May, who wore the penitential garb and mien. Then life appeared to her a little as it did to Cecilia — as a libidinous monster couching in a cave, with red jaws dripping with foul spume. Could Cecilia be right after all? If the elegant sanctity of cloistered nuns be the only possible life, and all joys vile except passionless and intellectual interests... if.... Oh, if... “But no, no,” the girl wailed out in despair. “There is no absolute right; what is right for one is not right for all. She does not feel what I feel — she does not suffer as I suffer.” The old, the terrible dream, the grey fear of having been born to die without having lived, again possessed her, again laid hands upon her, held her with its cold, cruel, and strangling fingers. She shuddered. The world disappeared — was engulfed in the quick fever of the flesh; and, her teeth chattering slightly, she said, “I have my work at least,” and, with her brain throbbing — a throbbing that died slowly away as the mind cleared — she wrote steadily for two hours.
And thus ended, ended as completely as if everyone concerned in it had been sunk in the deepest depths of the sea, May Gould’s Dublin adventure. It was scarcely spoken of again, and when they met at a ball given by the officers stationed in Galway, Alice was astonished to find that she experienced no antipathy whatever towards this rich-blooded young person. “My dear guardian angel, come and sit with me in this corner; I’d sooner talk to you than anyone — we won’t go down yet awhile — we’ll make the men wait.” May was full of affectionate impulses, and her outspokenness was often inexpressibly seductive. “Now I won’t let you go, clear,” she would say to her girl friends when they came to see her; “we have only a leg of mutton — mother is economising — but you must stay and eat it with us.” Her charm was the ever-varying but ever-recognisable charm that all frankly sensual natures exercise; and when she put her arms round Alice’s waist and told her the last news of Violet and her marquis, Alice abandoned herself to the caress and listened.
Violet’s marriage and the collection of rents were now the two subjects that possessed the heart of Galway. Rents were being paid; and, as an old suit of clothes drawn out of its slumber in the back of the wardrobe will come out looking spick and span, Galway in the autumn of 1882 bloomed into all its old freshness and vigour. The landlords cried the Land Act was ruin, but only to conceal their joy. For they knew that if the Government fixed their rents, the Government would have to enforce the payment of those rents. The Arrears Act had passed, and it would put large sums of money into their pockets. The Land League, which Mr. Forster’s Coercion Act had failed to put down, but, as we have already seen, had not failed to disorganise, had during the imprisonment of its leaders become broken up into small parties. And these, swollen with rancorous jealousies and separate ambitions, had, in their efforts to crush each other, almost forgotten the existence of their common foe — landlordism, and great wrongs had been committed. The burden of terror had slipped from the landlords’ shoulders on to the peasantry. All who had private grievances had taken advantage of these seasons of lawlessness to avenge them. No one could trust his next-door neighbour. Armed gangs demanding money broke into the cottages by night. It had become plain to all that rent-paying was preferable to an occult, an ever-imminent danger from which none could make sure of defending themselves. Therefore the Crimes Bill, wisely and judiciously administered by Lord Spencer, came an equal blessing to all, and the lurid phantom of the League vanished; yes, vanished suddenly as a card up the sleeve of a skilful conjurer.
The harvest had been plentiful, stock of all kinds was in great demand, a craze for money-making had set in; none could afford to run the risk of having his cattle houghed, an in a moment — literally in six weeks — all the colossal machinery, so far-reaching in its consequences, tumbled into a dust so fine that the winds of autumn seemed to have carried it away. Peasants and landlords rubbed their eyes, stated aghast, and then, laughing like people awakening from a nightmare, they resumed their ordinary occupations. The change was as marvellous as any transformation-scene. People thought differently, spoke differently, acted differently; stock was bought and sold without restrictions of any kind; carriages filled with pink-dressed young ladies traversed the country, and the training of horses occupied every manly and many a female mind. The stoning of the hounds, the poisoning of the covers, were only remembered as an ugly dream; in a trice the gentry disbanded their black-coated bodyguards, and resumed their own red coats. Mr. Scully summed up the situation when he said, “Rents paid, cattle high, Land League dead.” He might have added, “And my daughter’s going to marry a marquis.” Mrs. Barton wondered he did not, but Mr. Scully was a man of business, and he never interfered with his womenfolk.
Mrs. Barton had, indeed, thought of dismissing him from the agency, but after much consideration she had decided that this bit of revenge would keep, and would be employed with greater effect later on. For the present it was clear to her that she would have to pretend that she had never gone in for Lord Kilcarney, and make Violet Scully a handsome present. To do this was disagreeable, and it was, if possible, still more galling to listen with a smiling face to all the different accounts of the wedding with which Mrs. Barton was afflicted. Mrs. Gould was the chief torturer. All letters concerning the event she forwarded to Brookfield. She was full of information concerning the bitterness with which the family viewed the match, she had a store of racy anecdotes of how the Ladies Burke had received Mrs. Scully, and she could furnish the latest details of a recently-resuscitated legend. For it was now formally asserted, and with all due emphasis, that thirty years ago the late marquis had entered a grocer’s shop in Galway to buy a pound of tea for an importuning beggar: “And what do you think my dear? — it was Mrs. Scully who served it out to him.” And when somebody, it never was known who, but it was said to have been Olive, suggested that it was all fate, for Violet bad played the beggar-maid to King Cophetua, the brain-excitement grew acute as that attendant on solemn rites, — and, overcome with mysticity, the women lay prone before the coincidence.
At such stories Mrs. Barton laughed bewitchingly; but Mrs. Gould’s mission in life was neither to soothe troubled waters nor to fan raging fires, she merely propagated gossip industriously. Her information might be dubious, but it was always abundant; and if her words were sometimes as balm, they were sometimes as poison. She is now declaring that the Kilcarney estates will still yield two thousand a year to the young couple to live upon; a grey cloud steals over Mrs. Barton’s face, but Mrs. Gould continues ruthlessly:
“And Kilcarney Castle!” She would read from a letter she had received only that morning from a cousin of hers. “There are three avenues and five staircases, and six towers;” and the three avenues, the five staircases, and the six towers passioned the county of Galway for more than a month.
But, although the foremost, Mrs. Gould was not the only news-depôt in the county. Everyone had arranged with their Dublin friends for a constant supply of the latest details, and during the winter months the letters fell like rain; and they were circulated like magazines. The Brennans, the Duffys, the Ladies Cullen were in constant communication. An on-dit about a wedding present was sufficient cause for a visit; a scrap of information concerning the bridesmaids took in the female mind the importance that the fixing of a judicial rent did in the male. The orchestra of praise was gradually working up to a crescendo. The riches that awaited the bride were shrieked forth by the fiddle-like voices of the Brennans and Duffys, and, trumpeting loudly, the Ladies Cullen announced news from the peerage. For, besides the Marquis’s immediate relatives, Violet would he connected with an infinite number of grand people; a duke, it was whispered, was among the number. Lord So-and-so had presented her with one of the finest pearl necklaces that money could buy, and the Marquis of So-and-so with a tiara of diamonds, and Earls of This and That with sets of Sèvres china. There were bracelets, oriental vases, dressin
g-cases, card-cases, fans; and all the correspondents spoke rapturously of a marble group of clustering doves.
Then there was the trousseau. Everybody brought fresh details; picturesque descriptions of the trimmings of the morning gowns were given, and elaborate accounts in technical language were forwarded of the evening toilettes — toilettes that she would wear in Roman society, for it was understood that the bride and bridegroom would proceed direct to Italy. Nothing was omitted. There were to be so many pairs of embroidered slippers, so many embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs — mention was even made of the lace-trimmed chemises and drawers en batiste, with a blue ribbon above the knee.
The letters continued to fall like rain, and the country lived in a state of nervous irritation. The pale cheeks of Lord Rosshill’s seven daughters waxed a hectic red; the Ladies Cullen grew more angular, and smiled and cawed more cruelly; Mrs. Barton, the Brennans, and Duffys cackled more warmly and continuously; and Bertha, the terror of the débutantes, beat the big drum more furiously than ever. The postscripts to her letters were particularly terrible: “And to think that the grocer’s daughter should come in for all this honour. It is she who will turn up her nose at us at the Castle next year.”
