by George Moore
On the top of the stairs the girl listened. Nothing could be beard but the occasional tinkling of a guitar, and the high notes of a baritone voice singing Il Balen.
Olive ran down a few steps, but at that moment heavy footsteps and a jingling of glasses announced that the butler was carrying glasses from the dining-room to the pantry. “When will be cease, when will be cease; will he hang about that passage all night?” the girl asked herself tremblingly; and so cruel, so poignant bad her suspense become, that had it been prolonged much further her overwrought nerves would have given way, and she would have lapsed into a fit of hysterics. But the tray full of glasses she had heard jingling were now being washed, and the irritative butler did not stir forth again. This was Olive’s opportunity. From the proximity of the drawing-room to the hall-door it was impossible for her to open it without being heard; the kitchen-door was equalty, even more, dangerous, and she could hear the servants stirring in the passages; there was no safe way of getting out of the house unseen, except through the dining-room.
The candles were lighted, the crumbs were still on the tablecloth; passing behind the red curtain she unlocked the French window, and a moment she shivered in the keen wind that was blowing.
It was almost as bright as day A September moon soared like a bird above the dark woods; here indicated sharply, with the ebony leaves of the high branches stamped on the clear sky, to the right and left floating away in grey and mazy lines that melted and disappeared in the blue elusive distance. The house lay log-like in the white glow, and the chestnut-trees threw back shadows upon the sward.
There was an icy stillness in the air, and the pale high moon seemed so lonely that instinctively the girl shrank from her resolution. But her thoughts were febrile and weak, and a moment after she was peering from behind a buttress, wondering if the drawing-room blinds were down, and she might pass the windows without being seen. In a broken and fragmentary way the various aspects of the journey that lay before her were anticipated: as she ran across the garden swards she saw the post-horses galloping in front of her; as her nervous fingers strove to unfasten the wicket, she thought of the railway-carriage; and as she passed under the great dark trunks of the chestnut-trees she dreamed of Edward’s arm that would soon be cast protectingly around her, and his face, softer than the leafy shadows above her, would be leaned upon her, and his eyes filled with a brighter light than the moon’s would look down into hers.
The white meadow that she crossed so swiftly gleamed like the sea, and the cows loomed through the greyness like peaceful apparitions. But the dark wood with its sepulchral fir-tops and mysteriously-spreading beech-trees was full of formless terror, and once the girl screamed as the birds flew with an awful sound through the dark undergrowth. A gloomy wood by night has terrors for the bravest, and it was only the certainty that she was leaving girl-life — chaperons, waltz-tunes, and bitter sneering, for ever — that gave courage to proceed. A bit of mossgrown wall, a singularly-shaped holly-bush, a white stone, took fantastic and supernatural appearances, and once she stopped, paralysed with fear, before the grotesque shadow that a dead tree threw over an unexpected glade. A strange bird rose from the bare branches, and at that moment her dress was caught by a bramble, and, when her shriek tore the dark stillness, a hundred wings flew through the pallor of the waning moon.
At the end of this glade there was a paling and a stile that Olive would have to cross, and she could now hear, as she ran forward, the needles of the silver firs rustling with a pricking sound in the wind. The heavy branches stretched from either side, and Olive thought when she had passed this dernful alley she would have nothing more to fear; and she ran on blindly until she almost fell in the arms of someone whom she instantly believed to be Edward.
“Oh! Edward, Edward, I am nearly dead with fright!” she exclaimed.
“I am not Edward,” a woman answered. Olive started a step backwards; she would have fainted, but at the moment the words were spoken Mrs. Lawler’s face was revealed in a beam of weak light that fell through a vista in the branches.
“Who are you? Let me pass.”
“Who am I? You know well enough; we haven’t been neighbours for fifteen years without knowing each other by sight. So you are going to run away with Captain Hibbert!”
“Oh, Mrs. Lawler, let me pass.... I am in a great hurry, I cannot wait; and you won’t say anything about meeting me in the wood, will you ?”
“Let you pass, indeed... and what do you think I came here for? Oh, I know all about it — all about the corner of the road, and the carriage and post-horses! a very nice little plan and very nicely arranged, but I’m afraid it won’t come off — at least, not to-night.”
“Oh, won’t it, and why?” cried Olive, clasping her hands. “Then it was Edward who sent you to meet me, to tell me that — that... What has happened?”
“Scut me to tell you!”... Whom do you take me for? Is it for a... well, a nice piece of cheek! I carry your messages? Well, I never!”
“Then what did you come here for — how did you know?...”
“How did I know? That’s my business. What did I come here for? What do you think? Why, to prevent you from going off with Teddy.”
“With Teddy!”
“Yes, with Teddy. Do you think no one calls him Teddy but yourself?”
Then Olive understood, and, with her teeth clenched she said, “No, it isn’t true; it is a lie; I will not believe it.... Let me pass.... What business have you to detain me? — what right have you to speak to me? We don’t know you... no one knows you: you are a bad woman whom no one will know.”
“A bad woman! I like that — and from you. And what do you want to be, why are you running away from home?
Why, to be what I was.... We’re all alike, the same blood runs in our veins, and when the devil is in us we must have sweethearts, get them how we may: the airs and graces come on after; they are only so much trimming.”
“How dare you insult me, you bad woman! Let me pass; I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh yes, you do. You think Teddy will take you off to Paris, and spoon you and take you out; but he won’t, at least not to-night. I shan’t give him up so easily as you think, my lady.”
“Give him up! What is he to you? How dare you speak so of my future husband? Captain Hibbert only loves me, he has often told me so.”
“Loves nobody but you! I suppose you think that he never kissed, or spooned, or took anyone on his knee but you... Well, I suppose at twenty we’d believe anything a man told us; and we always think we are getting the first of it when we are only getting someone else’s leavings. But it isn’t for chicks of girls like you that a man cares, it isn’t to you a man comes for the love he wants; your kisses are very skim-milk indeed. It is in our arms that they learn what passion is; it is we who teach them the words of love that they murmur afterwards in your ears.”
The form here is nineteenth century, but the spirit is eternal; and, looking on Mrs. Lawler, drawn up to her full height, her opera-cloak white and vague beneath the light of a pale moon, it was easy to associate her and her aims with the dignity of a heroine of a Greek drama. The women looked at each other in silence, and both heard the needles shaken through the darkness above them. Mrs. Lawler stood by the stile, her hand was laid on the paling. At last Olive said: “let me pass. I will not listen to you any longer; nor do I believe a word you have said. We all know what you are; you are a bad woman whom no one will visit. Let me pass,” and pushing passionately forward she attempted to cross the stile. Then Mrs. Lawler took her by the shoulder and threw her roughly back. She fell heavily to the ground.
“Now you had better get up and go home,” said Mrs. Lawler, and she approached the prostrate girl. “I didn’t mean to hurt you; but you shan’t elope with Teddy if I can prevent it. Why don’t you get up?”
“Oh! my leg, my leg; you have broken my leg!”
“Let me help you up.’’
“Don’t touch me, you vile creatu
re,” said Olive attempting to rise; but the moment she put her right foot to the ground she shrieked with pain, and fell again.
“Well, if you are going to take it in that way, you may remain where you are, and I can’t go and ring them up at Brookfield. I don’t think there will he much eloping done tonight, so farewell.”
Many and passionate were the efforts Olive made to rise, but the pain was too piercing, and, unable to reach the paling, she lay on the wet ground moaning, and listening between her moans for hours to the mysterious noises and still more mysterious silences of the night. The moon rose higher and higher, and, wan and pale as the girl’s face, floated over the tall firs; and the fantastic shadow of the dead tree turned and turned until it became lost in other shadows; and the bird of prey came back with a loud clapping of wings, and it roosted till dawn on the topmost branch.
CHAPTER V.
ABOUT TEN O’CLOCK on the night of Olive’s elopement, Alice knocked tremblingly at her mother’s door.
“Mother,” she said, “Olive is not in her room, nor yet in the house; I have looked for her everywhere.”
“She is downstairs with her father in the studio,” said Mrs. Barton; and, signing to her daughter to be silent, she led her out of hearing of Barnes, who was folding and putting some dresses away in the wardrobe.
“I have been down to the studio,” Alice replied in a whisper.
“Then I am afraid she has run away with Captain Hibbert. But we shall gain nothing by sending men out with lanterns and making a fuss; by this time she is well on her way to Dublin. She might have done better than Captain Hibbert, but she might also have done worse. She will write to us in a few days to tell us that she is married, and to beg of us to forgive her.”
And that night Mrs. Barton slept even more happily, with her mind more completely at rest, than usual; whereas Alice, fevered with doubt and apprehension, lay awake. At seven o’clock she was at her window, watching the grey morning splinter into sunlight over the quiet fields. But suddenly all vaporous thoughts of Olive and her lover were crushed into silence, and, paralysed with fear, Alice watched the gamekeeper coming towards the house with a woman in his arms. The suspicion that her sister might have been killed in an agrarian outrage gripped her heart like an iron hand. She ran downstairs, and, rushing across the gravel, opened the wicket-gate. Olive was moaning with pain, but her moans were a sweet reassurance in Alice’s ears, and without attempting to understand the man’s story of how Miss Olive had sprained her ankle in crossing the stile in their wood, and how he had found her as he was going his rounds, she gave the man five shillings, thanked him, and sent him away. Barnes and the butler then carried Olive upstairs, and in the midst of much confusion Mr. Barton rode down the avenue in quest of Dr. Reed — galloped down the avenue, his pale hair blowing in the breeze.
“I wish you had come straight to me,” said Mrs. Barton to Alice, as soon as Barnes had left the room. “We’d have got her upstairs between us, and then we might have told any story we liked about her illness.”
“But the Lawlers’ gamekeeper would know all about it.”
“Ah, yes, that’s true. I never heard of anything so unfortunate in my life. An elopement is never very respectable, but an elopement that does not succeed, when the girl comes home again is just as bad as.... I cannot think how Olive could have managed to meet Captain Hibbert and arrange all this business, without my finding it out. I feel sure she must have had the assistance of a third party. I feel certain that all this is Barnes’ doing. I am beginning to hate that woman, with her perpetual smile, but it won’t do to send her away now; we must wait.” And on these words Mrs. Barton approached the bed.
Shaken with sudden fits of shivering, and her teeth chattering, Olive lay staring blindly at her mother and sister. Her eyes were expressive at once of fear and pain.
“And now, my own darling, will you tell me how all this happened?”
“Oh, not now, mother, not now... I don’t know; I couldn’t help it.... You mustn’t scold me, I feel too ill to bear it.”
“I am not thinking of scolding you, dearest, and you need not tell me anything you do not like.... I know you were going to run away with Captain Hibbert, and met with an accident crossing the stile in the Lawler Wood.”
“Oh, yes, yes; I met that horrid woman, Mrs. Lawler: she knew all about it, and was waiting for me at the stile She said lots of dreadful things to me... I don’t remember what; that she had more right to Edward than I...”
“Never mind, dear; don’t agitate yourself thinking of what she said....”
“And then, as I tried to pass her, she pushed me and I fell, and hurt my ankle so badly that I could not get up; and she taunted me, and she said she could not help me home because we were not on visiting terms. And I lay in that dreadful wood all night. But I can’t speak any more, I feel too ill; and I never wish to see Edward again.... the pain of my ankle is something terrible.”
Mrs. Barton looked at Alice expressively, and she whispered in her ear:
“This is all Barnes’ doing, but we cannot send her away... We must put a bold face on it, and brave it out.”
Dr. Reed was announced.
“Oh, how do you do, doctor?.... It was so good of you to come at once.... We were afraid Mr. Barton would not find you at home. I am afraid that Olive has sprained her foot badly. Last night she went out for a walk rather late in the evening, and, in endeavouring to cross a stile, she slipped and hurt herself so badly that she was unable to return home, and lay exposed for several hours to the heavy night dews. I am afraid she has caught a severe cold.... She has been shivering....”
“Can I see her foot?”
“Certainly. Olive, dear, will you allow Dr. Reed to see your ankle?”
“Oh, take care, mamma; you are hurting me!” shrieked the girl, as Mrs. Barton removed the bedclothes. At this moment a knock was heard at the door.
“Who on earth is this?” cried Mrs. Barton. “Alice, will you go and see? Say that I am engaged, and can attend to nothing now.”
When Alice returned to the bedside she drew her mother imperatively towards the window. “Captain Hibbert is waiting in the drawing-room. He says he must see you.”
At the mention of Captain Hibbert’s name Mrs. Barton’s admirably-governed temper showed signs of yielding: her face contracted and she bit her lips.
“You must go down and see him. Tell him that Olive is very ill and that the doctor is with her. And mind you, you must not answer any questions. Say that I cannot see him, but that I am greatly surprised at his forcing his way into my house after what has passed between us; that I hope he will never intrude himself upon us again; that I cannot have my daughter’s life endangered, and that, if he insists on persecuting us, I shall have to write to his Colonel.”
“Do you not think that father would be the person to make such explanations?”
“You know your father could not be trusted to talk sensibly for five minutes — at least,” she said, correcting herself, “on anything that did not concern painting or singing... But,” she continued, following her daughter to the door, “on second thoughts I do not think it would be advisable to bring matters to a crisis... I do not know how this affair will affect Olive’s chances, and if he is anxious to marry her I do not see why he should not... she may not be able to get any better. So you had better, I think, put him off — pretend that we are very angry, and get him to promise net to try to see or to write to Olive until, let us say, the end of the year. It will only make him more keen on her.”
When Alice opened the drawing-room door Captain Hibbert rushed forward; his soft eyes were bright with excitement, and his tall figure was thrown into a beautiful pose when he stopped.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Barton. I had expected your sister.”
“My sister is very ill in bed, and the doctor is with her.”
“Ill in bed!”
“Yes, she sprained her ankle last night in attempting to cross the stile in the
wood at the end of our lawn.”
“Oh, that was the reason... then... Can I see your sister for a few minutes?”
“It is quite impossible; and my mother desires me to say that she is very surprised that you should come here —
We know all about your attempt to induce Olive to leave her home.”
“Then she has told you? But if you knew how I love her you would not blame me. What else could I do? Your mother would not let me see her, and she was very unhappy at home; you did not know this, lout I did, and if luck hadn’t been against me.... Ah! but what’s the use in talking of luck; luck was against me, or she would have been my wife now. And what a little thing suffices to blight a man’s happiness in life; what a little, oh, what a little!” he said, speaking in a voice full of bitterness, and he buried his face in his hands.
Alice’s eyes as she looked at him were expressive of her thoughts — they beamed at once with pity and admiration. He was but the ordinary handsome young man that in England nature seems to reproduce in everlasting stereotype. Long graceful legs, clad in tight-fitting trousers, slender hips rising architecturally to square wide shoulders, a thin strong neck and a tiny head — yes, a head so small that an artist would at once mark off eight on his sheet of double elephant. And now he lay over the back of a chair weeping like a child, in the intensity of his grief he was no longer commonplace, and as Alice looked at this superb animal thrown back in a superb abandonment of pose, her heart filled with the natural pity that the female feels always for the male in distress, and the impulse within her was to put her arms about him and console him: and then she understood her sister’s passion for him, and her mind formulated it thus: “How handsome he is! Any girl would like a man like that.” And as Alice surrendered herself to those sensuous, or rather romantic feelings, her nature quickened to a sense of pleasure, and she grew gentler with him, and was glad to listen while he sobbed out his sorrows to her.
