by George Moore
“Ah, had I known what was going to happen it is I who would have pulled the fine feathers out of her.” Day after day, week after week, the agony was protracted, until every heart grew weary of the strain put upon it and sighed for relief. But it was impossible to leave off thinking and talking; and the various accounts of orange-blossoms and the bridesmaids, that in an incessant postal stream were poured during the month of January into Galway, seemed to provoke rather than abate the marriage fever. The subject was inexhaustible, and little else was spoken of until it was time to pack up trunks and prepare for the Castle season. The bride, it was stated, would be present at the second Drawing-room in March.
Nevertheless Alice noticed that the gladness of last year was gone out of their hearts; none expected much, and all remembered a little of the disappointments they had suffered. A little of the book had been read; the lines of white girls standing about the pillars in Patrick’s Hall, the empty waltz tunes and the long hours passed with their chaperons were terrible souvenirs to pause upon. Still they must fight on to the last, there is no going back — there is nothing for them to go back to. There is no hope in life for them but the vague hope of a husband. So they keep on to the last, becoming gradually more spiteful and puerile, their ideas of life and things growing gradually narrower, until, in their thirty-fifth or fortieth year, they fall into the autumn heaps, to lie there forgotten, or to be blown hither or thither by every wind that blows — poor old women who have never lived at all.
Two of Lord Rosshill’s daughters had determined to try their luck again, and a third was undecided; the Ladies Cullen said that they had their school to attend to and could not leave Galway; poverty compelled the Brennans and Duffys to remain at home. Alice would willingly have done the same, but, tempted by the thin chance that she might meet with Harding, she yielded to her mother’s persuasions. But in this she was disappointed, and she found Dublin more lamentable and soul-wearying than ever. It presented no new feature. The same absence of conviction, the same noisy gossiping, and inability to see over the horizon of Merrion Square, the same servile adoration of officialism, the same meanness committed to secure an invitation to the Castle, the same sing-song waltz tunes, the same miserable, mocking, melancholy, muslin hours were endured by the same white martyrs. The marchioness passes down the room, and their eyes glisten with envy and their lips suck greedily at the probability that she will be sold up in a year. But the present is the present, and she enjoys it. She will sometimes acknowledge acquaintanceship with her old schoolfellows; and with the Bartons she is especially affable; she has fought and beaten them; — she can afford to be generous, and she often dines with them in Mount Street.
And if the Castle remained unchanged, Mount Street lost nothing of its original aspect. Experience had apparently taught Mrs. Barton nothing; she knew but one set of tricks — if they failed she repeated them: she was guided by the indubitableness of instinct rather than by the more wandering light that is reason. Mr. Barton, who it was feared might talk of painting, and so distract the attention from more serious matters, was left in Galway, and amid eight or nine men collected here, there, and everywhere out of the hotels and barrack-rooms, the three ladies sat down to dinner. Mrs. Barton, who could have talked to twenty men, and have kept them amused, was severely handicapped by the presence of her daughters. Olive, at the best of times, could do little more than laugh; and as Alice never had anything to say to the people she met at her mother’s house, the silences that hung over the Mount Street dinner-table were funereal in intensity and length.
From time to time questions were asked relating to the Castle, the weather, and the theatre.
Therefore beyond the fact that neither Lord Kilcarney nor Mr. Harding was present, the girls passed their second season in the same manner as their first. Les deux pièces de résistance at Mount Street were a dissipated young English lord and a gouty old Irish distiller; and Mrs. Barton was making every effort to secure one of these. A pianist was ordered to attend regularly at four o’clock. And now if Alice was relieved of the duty of spelling through the doleful strains of “Dream Faces,” she was forced to go round and round with the distiller until an extra glass of port forced the old gentleman to beg mercy of Mrs. Barton. At one o’clock in the morning the young lord used to enter the Kildare Street Club extenuated. But not much way was made with either, and when one returned to London and the other to a sick-bed, Olive abandoned herself to a series of flirtations. At the Castle she danced with all who asked her, and she sat out dances in the darkest corners of the most distant rooms with every officer stationed in Dublin. Mrs. Barton never refused an invitation to any dance, no matter how low, and in all the obscure “afternoons” in Mount Street and Pembroke Street Olive’s blonde cameo-like face was seen laughing with every paltry official of Cork Hill and the gewgaw gig-men of Kildare Street.
In May the Bartons went abroad. Then followed the interminable series of flirtations with foreign titles. French Counts, Spanish Dukes, Russian Princes, Swedish noblemen of all kinds, and a goodly number of English refugees with irreproachable neckties and a taste for baccarat. And in the balmy gardens of Ostend and Boulogne, jubilant with June and the overture of Masaniello, Milord and Mrs. Barton walked in front, talking and laughing gracefully. Olive chose him who flattered her the most outrageously; and Alice strove hard to talk to the least objectionable of the men she was brought in contact with. Amid these specious talkers there were a few who reminded her of Mr. Harding, and she hoped later on to be able to turn her present experiences to account. There was, of course, much dining at cafés and dining at the casinos, and evening walks along the dark shore. Alice often feared for her sister, but the girl’s vanity and lightheadedness were her safeguards, and she returned to Galway only a little wearied by the long chase after amusement.
The soft Irish summer is pleasant after the glare of foreign towns. Now all the mountain perspectives are veiled in haze, in Ireland an unfailing promise of a continuance of fair weather, and the country lies green-dozing in the silvery light. You know it all! The rickety stone walls and the herds of cattle, the deep curved lines of the plantations of the domain lands, the long streaks of brown bog, the flashing tains of bog-water, and the ruined cottage. For Alice there was much charm in these familiar signs; and, although she did not approve of — although she would not care ever to meet them again — the people she had met at Ostend and Dieppe had interested her. They were at least neither so narrow-minded nor so ignorant as the Dubliners; and from them, although not in a great and effective way, she had picked up ideas of the variety of life, and now with these ideas germinating in her, a time of quiet, a time for reading and thinking, came after the noise of casinos and the glitter of fireworks as a welcome change. The liberty she had enjoyed, the sense it had brought with it that she was neither a doll nor a victim, had rendered her singularly happy. The plot of a new story was singing in her head, the characters flitted before her eyes, and to think of them, or to tell Cecilia of them, was a pleasure sufficient for all her daily desire. Olive, too, was glad. The sunlight has gone into her blood, and she romps with her mother and milord amid the hay, or, stretched at length, she listens to the green air of the lawn, and her dreams ripple like water along a vessel’s side, and the white wake of the past bubbles and glistens behind her; and when the life of the landscape is burnt out, and the day in dying seems to have left its soul behind, she stands watching, her thoughts curdling gently, the elliptical flight of the swallows through the gloom, and the flutter of the bats upon the dead sky.
But the evenings were long and silent, and the thoughtless brain, fed for many weeks upon noise and glitter, soon began to miss its accustomed stimulants. In the morning she sat with Barnes and tried to occupy herself with a little fancy-work, but the mechanical action of the fingers it involved irritated her, and the love-stories told by the smiling maid fostered the nerve-atrophy from which the girl suffered. And all the quid: febrile revulsions of feeling were manifested
in sudden twitchings of the face, and abrupt movements of the limbs. Mrs. Barton was keenly alive to what was passing in her daughter’s mind, and she insisted on Olive’s accompanying her to the tennis parties with which the county teemed. Sir Charles, Mr. Adair, and even poor Sir Richard were put forward as the most eligible of men.
“It is impossible to say when the big fish will be caught; it is often the last try that brings him to land,” murmured Mrs. Barton. But Olive had lost courage, and could fix her thoughts on no one. And, often when they returned home, she would retire to her room to have a good cry. One evening Alice found her lying on her bed sobbing bitterly.
“Oh, Olive,” exclaimed Alice, “what is the matter with you? “What are you crying about in that way?”
“Leave me alone, Alice; oh, go away.... don’t tease me, don’t tease me.... I only want to be left alone.”
“But listen, dear; can I do anything for you?”
“You! no, no, indeed you can’t.... I only want to be left alone; that isn’t much to ask.... I am so miserable, so unhappy: I wish I were dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, dead; what’s the use of living when I know that I shall be an old maid?.... We shall all be old maids.... What’s the use of being pretty, either, when Violet, bag of bones that she is, got the marquis after all?.... I have been out two seasons now, and nothing has come of all the trying. And yet I was the belle of the season, wasn’t I, Alice?” And now, looking more than ever like a cameo Niobe, Olive stared at her sister piteously. “Oh, yes, Alice, I know I shall be an old maid; and isn’t it dreadful, and I the belle of the season? It makes me so unhappy.... no one ever heard of the belle (and I was the belle not of one but of two seasons) remaining an old maid.... I can understand a lot of ugly things not getting married, but I — —”
Alice smiled, and half ironically she asked herself if Olive really suffered. No heart-pang was reflected in those blue mindless eyes; there was no heart to wound: only a little foolish vanity bad been bruised.
“And to think,” cried this whimpering beauty, when Alice had seen her successfully through a flood of hysterical tears, “that I was silly enough to give up dear Edward.... I am punished for it now.... indeed I am; and it was very wicked of me — it was a great sin. I broke his heart. But you know, Alice dear, that it was all mamma’s fault; she urged me on; and you know how I refused, how I resisted her.... Didn’t I resist — tell me? You know, and why won’t you say that I did resist?”
“You did, indeed, Olive; but you must not distress yourself, or you will make yourself ill.”
“Yes, perhaps you are right, there’s nothing makes one look so ugly as crying.... and if I lost my looks and met Edward he might not care for me.... he’d be disappointed, I mean — but I haven’t lost my looks; I am just as pretty as I was when I came out first. Am I not, Alice?”
“Indeed you are, dear.”
“You don’t think I have gone off a bit — now do tell me? and I want to ask you what you think of my hair in a fringe; Papa says it isn’t classical, but that’s nonsense. I wish I knew how Edward would like me to wear it.”
“But you mustn’t think of him, Olive dear; you know mother would never hear of it.”
“I can’t help thinking of him.... And now I will tell you something, Alice, if you promise me on your word of honour not to scold me, and, above all, not to tell mamma.”
“I promise.”
“Well, the other day I was walking at the end of the lawn feeling so very miserable. You don’t know how miserable I feel; you are never miserable, for you think of nothing but your books. Well, mind you have given me your word not to tell anyone... I saw Captain Hibbert riding along the road, and when he saw me he stopped his horse and kissed his hand to me.”
“And what did you do?”
“I don’t know what I did... ho called me, and then I saw Milord coming along the road, and I fled; but, oh, isn’t it cruel of mamma to have forbidden Edward to come and see us? and he loves me as much as ever, I know he does.”
This was not the moment to advise her sister against clandestine meetings with Captain Hibbert; she was sobbing violently, and Alice had to assure her again and again that no one who had been the belle of the season had ever remained an old maid. But Alice (having well in mind the fate that had befallen May Gould) grew not a little alarmed when, in the course of next week, she suddenly noticed that Olive was in the habit of going out for long walks alone: and that she invariably returned in a state of high spirits, all the languor and weariness seeming to have fallen from her.
Alice once thought of following her sister. She watched her open the wicket-gate and walk across the meadows towards the Lawler domain. There was a bypath there leading to the highroad, but the delicacy of their position in relation to the owners prevented the Bartons from ever making use of it. Nor did Alice fail to notice that about the same time, Barnes, on the pretence of arranging the room for the evening, would strive to drive her from her writing-table, and beds were made and unmade, dresses were taken out of the wardrobe, and importuning conversations were begun. But, taking no heed of the officious maid, Alice, her thoughts tense with anxiety, sat at her window watching the slender figure of the girl growing dim in the dying light. Once she did not return until it was quite dark, and, reproaching herself bitterly for having remained so long silent, Alice walked across the pleasure-grounds to meet her.
“What, you here?” cried Olive, surprised at finding her sister waiting for her at the wicket. She was out of breath; she had evidently been running.
“Yes, Olive, I was anxious to speak to you — you must know that it is very wrong to meet Captain Hibbert, — and in the secrecy of a wood!”
“Who told you I had been to meet Captain Hibbert? I suppose you have been following me?”
“No, Olive, I have not, and you have no right to accuse me of such meanness. I have not been following you, but I cannot help putting two and two together. You told me something of this once before, and since then you have scarcely missed an evening.”
“Well, I don’t see any harm in meeting Edward; he is going to marry me.”
“Going to marry you?”
“Yes, going to marry me; is there anything so very extraordinary in that?.... Mamma had no right to break off the match, and I am not going to remain an old maid.”
“And have you told mother about this?”
“No, where’s the use, since she won’t hear of it?”
“And are you going to run away with Captain Hibbert?”
“Run away with him!” exclaimed Olive, laughing strangely. “No, of course I am not.”
“And how are you to marry him if you don’t tell mother?”
“I shall tell her when the time comes to tell her. And now, Alice dear, you will promise not to betray me, won’t you? You will not speak about this to anyone, you promise me? if you did I know I should go mad or kill myself.”
“But when will you tell mother of your resolution to marry Captain Hibbert?”
“Tell her? I’ll tell her to-morrow if you like; that is to say if you will give me your word of honour not to speak to her about my meeting Edward in the Lawler Wood.”
Afterwards Alice often wondered at her dulness in not guessing the truth. But at the time it did not occur to her that Olive might have made arrangements to elope with Captain Hibbert; and, on the understanding that all was to be explained on the following day, she promised to keep her sister’s secret.
CHAPTER IV.
LORD DUNGORY DINED at Brookfield that evening. He noticed that Olive was nervous and restless, and he reminded her of what a French poet had said on the subject of beauty. But she only turned her fair head impatiently, and a little later on when her mother spoke to her she burst into tears. Nor was she as easily consoled as usual, and she did not become calm until Mrs. Barton suggested that her dear child was ill, and that she would go upstairs and put her to bed. Then, looking a little alarmed, Olive declared she was quite
well, but she passionately begged to be left alone. As they left the diningroom she attempted to slip away; Alice made a movement as if to follow her, but Mrs. Barton said:
“Leave her to herself, Alice; she would rather be left alone. She has overstrained her nerves, that is all.”
Olive heard these words with a singular satisfaction, and as she ascended the stairs from the first landing her heart beat less violently. On the threshold of her room she paused to listen for the drawing-room door to shut. Through the silent house the lock sounded sharply.
“I hope none of them will come upstairs bothering after me,” the girl murmured to herself; “if they do I shall go mad.” And standing in the middle of the floor she looked round the room vacantly, unable to collect her thoughts. The wardrobe was on her right, and, seeing herself in the glass, she wondered if she were looking well. Her eyes wandered from her face to her shoulders, and hence to her feet. Going over to the toilette-table she sought amid her boots, and having selected a strong pair, she commenced to button them. Her back was turned to the door, and at the slightest sound she started into an upright position and seized the hair-brushes. Once or twice the stairs creaked, and she felt something would occur to stop her. Her heart was beating so violently that she thought she was going to be ill; and she almost burst out crying because she could not mate up her mind if she should put on a hat and travelling-shawl, or run down to the wood as she was, to meet the Captain. “He will surely,” she thought, “have something in the carriage to put around me, but he may bring the dogcart, and it looks very cold, very cold... But if Alice or mamma saw me coming downstairs with a shawl on, they would at once suspect something, and I should never be able to get away... I wonder what time it is... I promised to meet Edward at nine, he will of course wait for me, but what time is it?... We dined at half-past seven... we were an hour at dinner, half-past eight, and I have been ten minutes here... It must be nearly nine now... and it will take me ten minutes to get to the corner of the road... The house is quiet now.”
