by George Moore
CHAPTER IX.
AT BROOKFIELD ON the morning of the 3rd of December,’84, the rain fell persistently in the midst of a profound silence. The spike-like branches of the beech and chestnut trees stood stark in the grey air as if petrified; for there was not wind enough to waft the falling leaf, and it fell straight as if shotted. The sheep strove to graze; the green-painted verandah and the glass doors were lugubrious anachronisms; and in the soaring silence and the engulfing rain there was a distinct sensation of tragedy.
Not a living thing was to be seen except the wet sheep, nor did anything stir either within or without; and the house, like a poor belated organ-woman with white head-dress and Southern earrings, looked as if it were trying to crouch, to escape, to hide itself from the merciless rain. Suddenly an outside car, one seat overturned to save the cushions from the wet, came careering up the avenue. At a glance you saw it was a post-car. There was the shaggy horse and the wild-looking driver in a long, shaggy frieze ulster. He rang the bell. The door was opened by a young woman. She was crying bitterly. Shouldering her portmanteau, the carman proceeded at once, with a piece of rope which he drew from his coat-pocket, to fasten it in front of the shaggy horse’s tail. Even now, at the last moment, Alice expected the drawing-room door to open and her mother to come rushing out to wish her goodbye. But Mrs. Barton remained implacable, and after laying one more kiss on her sister’s pale cheek, Alice, in a passionate flood of tears, was driven away from the home where she had known so much grief and pain. She went straight to the chapel.
In streaming macintoshes, and leaning on dripping umbrellas, she found her husband, and Gladys and Zoe Brennan waiting for her in the porch of the church. Everybody felt a little miserable, and the women strove to kiss each other’s wet faces.
“Did you ever see such weather?” said Zoe.
“Is it not dreadful!” said Gladys.
“It was good of you to come,” said Alice.
“It was indeed!” said the bridegroom, who felt he was obliged to say something.
“What nonsense!” said Zoe; “we were only too pleased; and if to-day be wet, to-morrow and the next and the next will be sunshine, at least for you.”
And thanking Zoe inwardly for this most appropriate remark, the party ascended the church toward the altar-rails, where Father Shannon was awaiting them. Large, pompous, and arrogant, he stood on his altar-steps, and his hands were crossed over his portly stomach. On either side of him the plaster angels bowed their heads and folded their wings. Above him, the great chancel window, with its panes of green and yellow glass, jarred in an unutterable clash of colour; and the great white stare of the chalky walls, and the earthen floor with its tub of holywater, and the German prints absurdly representing the suffering of Christ, bespoke the primitive belief, the coarse superstition of which the place was an immediate symbol. Alice and the Doctor looked at each other and smiled, but their thoughts were too firmly fixed on the actual problem of their united lives to wander far in the most hidden ways of the old world’s psychical extravagances. What did it matter to them what absurd usages the place they were in was put to? — they, at least, were only making use of it as they might of any other public office; the police station, where inquiries are made concerning parcels left in cabs; the Commissioner before whom an affidavit is made. And it served its purpose as well as any of the others did theirs. The priest joined their hands, Edward put the ring on Alice’s finger, and the usual prayers did no harm if they did no good, and having signed their names in the register and bid good-bye to the Miss Brennans, they got into the carriage, man and wife, their feet set for ever upon one path, their interests and delights melted to one interest and one delight, their separate troubles merged into one trouble that might or might not be made lighter by the sharing: and penetrated by such thoughts they leaned back on the blue cushions of the carriage, happy, and yet a little frightened.
Father than pass three hours waiting for a train at the little station of Ardrahan, it had been arranged to spend the time driving to Athenry; and, as the carriage rolled through the deliquefying country, the eyes of the man and the woman rested half fondly, half regretfully, and wholly pitifully on all the familiar signs and the wild landmarks, which during so many years had grown into and become part of the texture of their habitual thought; on things of which they would now have to wholly divest themselves, and remember only as the background of their younger lives. Through the streaming glass they could see the inevitable strip of bog; and the half-naked woman, her soaked petticoat clinging about her red legs, piling the wet peat into the baskets thrown across the meagre back of a starveling ass. The poor animal turned its tail to the swiftly-rolling vehicle. And further on there are low-lying swampy fields, and between them and the roadside a few miserable poplars with cabins sunk below the dung-heaps, and the meagre potato-plots lying about them; and then, as these are passed, there are green enclosures full of fattening kine, and here and there a dismantled cottage, one wall still black with the chimney’s smoke, uttering to those who know the country a tale of eviction and the consequent horrors: despair, hunger, revenge, and death. And above all these, sweeping along the crests of the hills, are long lines of beautiful plantations, and, looking past the great gateways and the outlying fir-woods, between the masses of the beeches you can see the white Martello-tower-like houses of the landlords. Alice and Edward knew them all, could as they passed away from them for ever see the furniture in their rooms, catch the intonation of their voices, understand their enthusiasm for the Coercion Acts. Writs could now be served, the land-hunger was as keen as ever, and the farms of evicted tenants could be relet without difficulty or danger.
Suddenly the carriage turned up a narrow road. The coachman stopped to inquire the way, and our travellers were the unwilling witnesses of one of those scenes for which Ireland is so infamously famous — an eviction. The cabin was a fair specimen of its kind. It was built of rough stone without mortar, and through the chinks all the winds of heaven were free to wander. There was a potato-field at the back, and a mud-heap in front, and through the slush the shattered door was approached by stepping-stones. From the exterior it is easy to imagine the interior — a dark, fetid hole, smelling of smoke, potato-skins, and damp. And about this miserable tenement there were grouped a dozen policemen armed with rifles, two men in pot-hats and long ulsters, and a dozen or fifteen peasants come to watch the proceedings. An old woman of seventy had been placed for shelter beneath a hawthorn-bush; six young children clung about their shrieking mother; the man, with nothing but a pair of trousers and a ragged shirt to protect him from the terrible rain, stood a picture of speechless despair on the dung-heap, amid a mass of infamous bedding, and a few wooden stools that had been dragged from the house by the landlord’s agents.
“Is it not terrible that human creatures should endure such misery?” exclaimed Alice.
“Yes, it is very shocking, it is horrible, let us do something for them; suppose we pay the rent for them, it cannot be much, and restore them to their miserable home. We cannot leave Ireland with such a shocking picture engraved on our minds for ever.”
“Yes, yes, Edward, do pay the rent for them — it is too terrible.”
The transaction was soon concluded, the man was handed a receipt, and told he might put his things back into his house. All were taken by surprise; but, when the first shock was over, uttering a wild cry, the woman, dragging her children forward, threw herself on her knees and invoked a thousand blessings on the heads of her benefactors. It was a strange sight — the old bedridden grandmother, beneath her hawthorn-bush, clasped her palsied hands; the half-naked mother and the half-naked children, the man in his tattered shirt, kneeling in line in front of their frightful hovel, in the middle of this barren Irish road, in the long wash of the rain, conscious of nothing but a wild savage feeling of gratitude, shouted forth a primitive thanksgiving for what they deemed a deliverance from evil: “May Heaven bless you, may Christ Jesus our Lord and His Hol
y Mother this day watch over you!”
The agents laughed coarsely. One said:—” There are plenty more of them over the hill on whom he can exercoise his charity if he should feel so disposed!”
“It would save us a dale of throuble and sixpense if he would; but to whom do we go next? Mick Flanagan! Where does he live?”
“I show you, yer honour,’’ exclaimed half a dozen peasants, “this way, not a couple of hundred yards from here, close to the public, where we may have a drap if yer honour feels so inclined.”
“And to think,” said Dr. Reed reflectively, “that they are the same peasants that we once saw so firmly banded that it seemed as if nothing would ever again separate them, that nothing would ever again render them cowardly and untrue to each other; is it possible that those wretched hirelings, so ready to betray, so eager to lick the hand that smites them, are the same men whom we saw two years ago united by one thought, organised by one determination to resist the oppressor, marching firmly to nationhood? And when one thinks of the high hopes and noble ambitions that were lavished for the redemption of these base creatures, one is disposed to admit in despair the fatality of all human effort, and, hearkening to the pessimist, concede with a Mephistophelean grin that all here is vileness and degradation.”
“Of humanity we must not think too much; for the present we can best serve it by learning to love each other.”
Then Edward put his arm about Alice and drew her towards him. The painful incident they had just witnessed had already borne fruit; and, absorbed in the contemplation of a happiness which seemed to them immeasurable, as profound as the misery of the unfortunate people they had rescued from death, the lovers leaned back in the shadow of the carriage and listened to the ceaseless splashing of the rain which filled the ear and mingled with the cries of startled lapwings.
* * * * *
Two years and a half have passed away, and the suburban home predicted by May, when she came to bid Alice a last good-bye, arises before the reader in all its yellow paint and homely vulgarity. Here you find the ten-roomed house with all its special characteristics. Let us examine the frontage, a dining-room window looking upon a commodious area with dust and coal-holes. The drawing-room has two windows, and the slender balcony is generally set with flower-boxes. Above that come the two windows of the best bedroom belonging to Mr and Mrs., and above that again the windows of two small rooms, respectively inhabited by the eldest son and daughter; and these are topped by the mock-Elizabethan gable which enframes the tiny window of a servant’s room. Each house has a pair of trim stone pillars, the crude green of the Venetian blinds jars the cultured eye, and even the tender green of the foliage in the crescent seems as cheap and as common as if it had been bought — as everything else is in Ashbourne Crescent — at the Stores. But how much does this crescent of shrubs mean to the neighbourhood? Is it not there that the old ladies take their pugs for their constitutional walks, and is it not there that the young ladies play tennis with their gentleman acquaintances when they come home from the City on a Saturday afternoon?
In Ashbourne Crescent there is neither Dissent nor Radicalism, but general aversion to all considerations which might disturb belief in all the routine of existence, in all its temporal and spiritual aspects, as it had come amongst them. The fathers and the brothers go to the City every day at nine, the young ladies play tennis, read novels, and beg to be taken to dances at the Kensington Town Hall. On Sunday the air is alive with the clanging of bells, and in orderly procession every family proceeds to church, the fathers in all the gravity of umbrellas and prayer-books, the matrons in silk mantles and clumsy ready-made elastic-sides; the girls in all the gaiety of their summer dresses with lively bustles bobbing, the young men in frock-coats which show off their broad shoulders — from time to time they pull their tawny moustaches. Each house keeps a cook and housemaid, and on Sunday afternoons, when the skies are flushed with sunset and the outlines of this human warren grow harshly distinct — black lines upon pale red — these are seen walking arm-in-arm away towards a distant park with their young men.
To some this air of dull well-to-do-ness may seem as intolerable, as obscene in its way as the look of melancholy silliness which the Dubliners and their dirty city wear so unintermittently. One is the inevitable decay which must precede an outburst of national energy; the other is the smug optimism, that fund of materialism, on which a nation lives, and which in truth represents the bulwarks wherewith civilisation defends itself against those sempiternal storms which, like atmospheric convulsions, by destroying, renew the tired life of man. And that Ashbourne Crescent, with its bright brass knockers, its white-capped maidservant, and spotless oilcloths, will in the dim future pass away before some great tide of revolution that is now gathering strength far away, deep down and out of sight in the heart of the nation, is probable enough; but it is certainly now, in all its cheapness and vulgarity, more than anything else representative, though the length and breadth of the land be searched, of the genius of Empire that has been glorious through the long tale that nine hundred years have to tell. Ashbourne Crescent may possibly soon be replaced by something better, but at present it commands our admiration, for it is, as has been said, more than all else, typical England. Neither ideas nor much lucidity will be found there, but much belief in the wisdom shown in the present ordering of things, and much plain sense and much honesty of purpose. Certainly if your quest be for hectic emotion and passionate impulses you would do well to turn your steps aside, you will not find them in Ashbourne Crescent; there life flows monotonously, perhaps sometimes even a little moodily, but it is built upon a basis of honest materialism — that materialism without which the world cannot live; which, let the word be said, is the Light of the world. Human greatness at Ashbourne Crescent is as good as it be, and it teems with all the delights of home and habit, delights that alone are assuaging, and to which even the most ardent spirits turn in the end and accept humbly and with admiration and love.
No. 31 differs a little from the rest of the houses. The paint on its walls is fresher, and there are no flowers on its balcony: the hall-door has tin ee bells instead of the usual two, and there is a brass plate, with “Dr. Reed” engraved upon it. The cook is talking through the area-railings to the butcher-boy; a very smart parlourmaid opens the door, and we see that the interior is as orderly, commonplace, and clean as we might expect at every house in the crescent. The floorcloths are irreproachable, the marble-painted walls are unadorned with a single picture. On the right is the diningroom, a mahogany table bought for five pounds in the Tottenham Court Road, a dozen chairs to match, a sideboard and a small table; green-painted walls decorated with two engravings, one of Frith’s “Railway Station,” the other of Guido’s “Fortune.” The room is rigid and bare. Further down the passage loading to the kitchen-stairs there is a second room: this is the Doctor’s consulting-room. A small bookcase filled with serious-looking volumes, a mahogany escritoire strewn with papers, letters, memoranda of all sorts. The floor is covered with a bright Brussels carpet; there are two leather armchairs, and a portrait of an admiral hangs over the fireplace.
Let us go upstairs. How bright and clean are the high marble-painted walls! and on the first landing there is a large cheaply-coloured window. The drawing-room is a double room, not divided by curtains but by stiff folding doors. The furniture is in red, and the heavy curtains that drape the windows fall from gilt cornices. In the middle of the floor there is a settee (probably a reminiscence of the Shelbourne Hotel); and on either side of the fireplace there are sofas, and about the hearthrug many armchairs to match with the rest. Above the chimneypiece there is a gilt oval mirror, worth ten pounds. The second room is Alice’s study; it is there she writes her novels. A table in black wood with a pile of MSS. neatly fastened together stands in one corner; there is a bookcase just behind; its shelves are furnished with imaginative literature, such as Shelley’s poems, Wordsworth’s poems, Keats’ poems. There are also handsome editions
of Tennyson and Browning, presents from Dr. Reed to his wife. You see a little higher up the shelf a thin volume, Swinburne’s “Atalanta in Calydon,” and next to it is Walter Pater’s Renaissance — studies in art and poetry. There are also many volumes in yellow covers, evidently French novels.
The character of the house is therefore essentially provincial, and shows that its occupants have not always lived amid the complex influences of London life, viz., is not even suburban. Nevertheless here and there traces of new artistic impulses are seen. On the mantelpiece in the larger room there are two large blue vases; on a small table stands a pot in yellow porcelain, evidently from Morris’; and on the walls there are engravings from Burne Jones. Every Thursday afternoon numbers of ladies, all of whom write novels, assemble here to drink tea and talk of their work.
It is now eleven o’clock in the morning. Alice enters her drawing-room. You see her: a tall, spare woman with kind eyes, who carries her arms stiffly. She has just finished her housekeeping, she puts down her basket of keys, and with all the beautiful movement of the young mother she takes up the crawling mass of white frock, kisses her son and settles his blue sash. And when she has talked to him for a few minutes she rings the bell for nurse: then she sits down to write. As usual her pen runs on without a perceptible pause. Words come to her easily, but she has not finished the opening paragraph of the article she is writing when the sound of rapid footsteps attracts her attention, and Olive bursts into the room.
“Oh, Alice, how do you do? I couldn’t stop at home any longer, I am sick of it.”
“Couldn’t stop at home any longer, Olive, what do you mean?”
“If you won’t take me in, say so, and I’ll go.”
“My dear Olive, I shall be delighted to have you with me: but why can’t you stop at home any longer — surely there is no harm in my asking?”
