Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “Marry a madman! What do you mean?”

  “Well, I call a man that who comes regularly to see a girl with a revolver in one pocket and a stiletto in the other, and threatens to leave himself wallowing in a pool of blood at her feet—”

  “You mean to say he does that? You are clearly determined to drive the poor fellow out of his mind with your infernal coquetry. Well, women are the most troublesome, and I believe in many cases, the wickedest creatures on the face of God’s earth.”

  “You shut up. Men who don’t get on with women always abuse them; you are soured since Miss —— , the actress, jilted you.”

  “If you ever dare mention that subject, I will never speak to you again. You know I don’t break my word.”

  “Why do you interfere in my affairs? You don’t think of me when you go down to browbeat Charlie Stracey; you don’t think of what would have been said of me had Frank hit him, and it had all come out in the papers.” Maggie said no more; she saw she had gone too far. Willy sat puffing at his pipe; but when her father spoke of a certain investment that had not turned out as well as he had anticipated, he joined in the conversation, and she hoped her cruelty was forgotten.

  XII

  FRANK UTTERED A cry of surprise when he opened the studio door to his friend. It was his favourite complaint that Willy never came to see him.

  “At last, at last! This is the second time you have been in the place since it was finished, faithless friend!”

  “My dear fellow, you know it is not my fault. I have been very busy lately trying to get on with my accounts. There’s not a room in the Manor House where I can work in; my sisters’ things are everywhere, and they must not be interfered with — their ball-dresses, their birds, their work. My sisters think of nothing but pleasure.”

  “Triss, go back, go to your chair, sir; I’ll get the whip.”

  Showing his fangs, the bull-dog retired; then with a hideous growl sprang upon his chair, and sat eyeing Willy’s calves.

  “I cannot think what pleasure it can give you to keep such a brute. Even if I had my accounts finished, I don’t think I should care to come here much. It isn’t safe.”

  “You are quite mistaken. There’s not a better-tempered dog alive than Triss; he wouldn’t bite any one unless he attacked me. Give me a slap, and you’ll see — I won’t let him come near you.”

  “Thank you, I’d rather not. But he sometimes growls even at you, and shows his teeth, too.”

  “That’s only a way of his, and when he does it I kick him. Come here, Triss — come here, sir!” The dog approached slowly; he sat down and gave his paw to his master, but he did not cease to growl. “There! We have had enough of you, go back to your chair. What will you take — a glass of Chartreuse — a cigarette?”

  “Thanks, both if you will let me. I see you like pretty things,” he said, admiring the tall legs of the table — early English — and the quaint glasses into which Frank poured the liqueur. “You’ve got the place to look very nice.”

  “Very different from what is was when the smith and his boisterous brood were here,” and as if he intended an apt illustration of his words, he stretched his leg out on the white fur rug and surveyed his calf and red silk stocking. “Just look at that dog, isn’t he a beauty? I always think he looks well in that attitude, leaning his head over the rail. I began a picture of him the other day in a pose somewhat like that. I’ll show it you.” Frank propped his sketch against the leg of the sofa, and returned to his place on the sofa. “What do you think of it? Your father said it was very like.”

  “It is like him, but I can see no merit in it. I’m afraid of the brute. I can’t help hating him, for he always looks as if he were going for my legs. What else have you been painting? Any pretty women about? I should admire them more.”

  “I haven’t been painting lately,” he said, sighing a little melodramatically, as was his wont, “I think I have been playing the piano more than anything else. I have composed something too, I don’t think it bad, I’ll play it to you: a dialogue between a gentleman and a lady. He speaks first, then she answers, then I blend the two motives, and that is what they both say.”

  Willy sat enwrapped in his own thoughts, not having heard a note. Though he knew that Willy was incapable of judging of music, it disappointed him that his dialogue had passed unperceived. Then smiling, he struck a few notes, and Willy awoke. “You haven’t been listening,” he said, reproachfully. “You don’t care for any music, except that little tune.”

  “Yes, I do; I heard what you played, and I think it very pretty.”

  “Willy, I am the most miserable man in the world. Every hour, every minute of my life is a pain to me. I never knew before what you must have suffered, but I know now; it is a sickening feeling, it takes you by the throat, it rises in the throat, and you are almost suffocated. Last night I lay awake hour after hour thinking. I could see Maggie as plainly as I can see you — she looked down upon me out of space with strange, steadfast eyes, and my whole soul went out to her, and I cried to her that I loved her beyond all things; and we seemed to be so near each other; it seemed such an intimate and perfect communion of spirit and sense that I seemed, as it were, lifted out of actual life; I seemed to myself holier, purer, better than I had ever been before; I seemed to loose all that is gross and material in me, and to gain in all that is best and worthiest in man. Did you feel like that when you were in love?”

  “I don’t know that I felt exactly like that. But never mind how I felt; you are too fond of alluding to that subject, it is a very painful one to me; you will make me regret that I ever told you anything about it.”

  “I am sorry I mentioned it. It is strange, but when one suffers one likes to speak of and to compare with one’s own the suffering that another has endured. Your sister treats me most cruelly. She has forgiven me that miserable business, but she refuses to hold out any hope that she will ever be my wife. I don’t understand — I am utterly at sea. I don’t believe for a moment that she cares for that horrid brute; he is gone away. She tells me she never cared for him. If so, I should like to learn your explanation of her conduct.”

  Willy stroked his moustache, apparently declining the responsibility of apologist; but his manner showed he had something on his mind, and Frank sought more eagerly than ever to enlist his sympathy and support.

  “I have done everything I could to win her. I don’t know why she should be so difficult to please. I am not bad looking, I am at least as good looking as that damned brute” (here he paused to glance at himself in the glass and smooth the curls above his forehead). “I am certainly quite as clever” (here he thought of his painting, and his eye sought one of his pictures), “and my position — I will not speak of that, it would be snobbish. Women have cared for me. I have told Maggie hundreds of times that I never could care for any but her. Fate seems to have specially marked us for each other. You must admit that there is something very remarkable in the way we have been brought together over and over again. I have told her that my life is worthless without her. The day before yesterday, when I was speaking to her, I burst into tears. That a man should cry, no doubt, seems to you very ridiculous but if you knew how I suffer you would pity me. I often think I shall commit suicide.” Frank took the stiletto from his pocket. “I don’t mind telling you, when you knocked at the door I was lying on the sofa thinking it over. One stab just here and I should be at peace for ever. I told her so yesterday.”

  “I’m not fond of giving advice, as you know — I have quite enough to do to think about my own affairs — but as you have often spoken to me on this matter, and as you have asked me for my opinion and my help, I had better tell you that I differ entirely from you concerning the wisdom of the course you are pursuing.”

  “How’s that?” said Frank, at first surprised and then delighted at Willy’s breaking from his reserve.

  “What I mean is, that I think you would be more successful if you would lay aside daggers and revolvers, an
d try to win her affection by patience and gentleness. Maggie was talking to me about it no later than last night, and I could see clearly that you frighten her with bluster. I am sure there are times when she dreads you; it must be a positive terror to her to sit with you alone — so it would be to any girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maggie is a very delicate and nervous girl, and it wouldn’t surprise me if your threats to commit suicide seriously affected her health; you come with a revolver and a stiletto, and you ask her to marry you, and if she doesn’t at once say yes, you abuse her, declaring all the time that you’ll stab yourself with the revolver and shoot yourself with the stiletto — I beg your pardon, I mean—”

  “Of course, if you’ve come here only to turn me into ridicule—”

  “I assure you I didn’t mean it — a slip of the tongue,” and as their eyes met at that moment, neither could refrain from laughter.

  “Admit that there is something in what I say. If you will behave a little more quietly — if you will talk to her nicely; leave off assuring her of your love, she knows all that already; have some patience and forbearance; you will see if before long she doesn’t change towards you.”

  His interest in the matter was a desire that his sister should not miss this chance of marrying the future Lord Mount Rorke. But Maggie felt too sure of Frank to resist the temptation to tantalise him; besides her moods were naturally various, and the first relapse into her former coldness was answered by a sudden reversion to threats of murder and suicide, and one summer evening about six o’clock, when Mrs. Horlock took her dogs out and stood at the corner waiting for Angel, a rumour was abroad that Mr. Escott had stabbed himself to the heart, and had fallen weltering in his blood at Miss Brookes’s feet.

  Dr Dickinson walked across the green, watched with palpitating anxiety from the corner of the Southdown Road. The General spoke to the farmer, and the farmer’s pupil nudged the general dealer. Mrs. Horlock spoke to the grocers, and the owners of the baths declared they had just heard from their servant that the young man was not dead, but mortally wounded.

  There was, therefore, no doubt that Dr Dickinson was going to Mrs. Heald’s, and would not turn to the right and walk to the station for the quarter-to-seven train; and expectation on this point ceasing, the group expressed its sympathy for the young man. Poor young man — and so good-looking too — what will she do if he should die? — and he must die — there was no doubt of it. Maria had met Mary — that was the housemaid at the Manor House — it was Mary who had mopped up the blood. She said there was a great pool right in the middle of the new carpet under the window — they were sitting there on the ottoman when he said suddenly, “I have come to ask you to marry me; if you won’t I must die.” Notwithstanding this she continued to play with him — the cruel little minx! He could stand it no longer, and he pulled out a dagger he had brought from the East, and stabbed himself twice close to the heart. What will she do? — she is his murderer — to all intents and purposes she is his murderer — she will have to go into a convent — she won’t go into a convent — she’ll brazen it out. No one thinks much of those girls — the way Sally carried on with young Meason — it was disgraceful — they say she used to steal her father’s money and give it to him — Dr Dickinson could tell fine tales.

  Then gossip ceased, and they were in doubt if they might intercept the doctor and obtain news of his patient when he left Mrs. Heald’s. Some strolled about the green, pretending to be taking the air. Mrs. Horlock, however, had no scruples, and picking up Angel and calling to Rose and Flora, she walked straight to Mrs. Heald’s, and was seen to go in. Some five minutes after she came out with the doctor. Frank was not dead, nor mortally wounded, nor even dangerously wounded, but he had had a very narrow escape.

  “I said to him, ‘You have had a very narrow escape.’ The fact is — (I, of course, examined the weapon) — a small part of the point had been broken away; it was this that saved him. The first blow scarcely pierced his clothes; the second was more effective, it entered the flesh just above the heart, and I have no doubt if the steel had penetrated a quarter of an inch deeper that he would have killed himself. But so far as I can see at present, he will get over it without much difficulty.”

  “When did it occur?”

  “About an hour ago, at the Manor House. It appears that he has gone there every day for the last three weeks to ask Miss Brookes to marry him; she, however, would not give him any definite answer—”

  “Horrid girl!”

  “I never liked her; most deceitful; no doubt she flirted with him outrageously.”

  “I can’t say. I hear that he often threatened to kill himself, and to-day, to conclude, he pulled out his stiletto.”

  “I thought it was a dagger he had brought from the East?”

  “No, the weapon they showed me was an Italian stiletto.”

  The grocer’s daughter shuddered, her mother murmured, “And for that girl.”

  “We didn’t know him. The Brookes never allow their friends to know any one in Southwick, but I have heard that he is an exceedingly nice—”

  “He will be Lord Mount Rorke, if his uncle doesn’t marry again.”

  “He must have been desperately in love; no one ever heard of such a thing before. It sounds like the Middle Ages — a stiletto!”

  “But what could he see in her? That’s what I can’t make out; can you?”

  “Ah! there I can’t assist you. I hope to be able to cure him of the stiletto wound, but Cupid’s arrows are beyond me. They did not fly so thickly or strike so hard in my time.” And, laughing, the doctor withdrew.

  “I suppose that after this she will marry him; she never intended to let him slip through her fingers. I can see her face when she heard that another quarter of an inch and her chance of being Lady Mount Rorke was gone for ever.”

  “I daresay he won’t marry her now. It would serve her right. I should be so glad.”

  And so pouring their gall out upon the unfortunate Maggie, the tradespeople returned to their homes. The stiletto was so utterly unprecedented, and so complete a reversal of all conception of the chances of life at Southwick, that every one felt puzzled and dissatisfied, even when gossip had brought to light every circumstantial detail of the romantic story. Had the deed been done with a knife, with anything but a stiletto; had he hanged himself, or cut his throat with a razor, or shot himself with his revolver, the wonder of the Southwickians would not have been so excited. But a stiletto! And for a week an Italy of brigands and bravoes, and stealthy surprises haunted shadows of picturesque archways, an Italy of chromo-lithographed skies and draperies in the Southdown Road. Maggie was spoken of with alternate fear and hate; her wickedness seemed more than natural, and had the Southdown Road known anything of Italian opera, there is little doubt that Miss Brookes would have been compared to Lucretia Borgia. The young women looked out of their windows at night, and wondered how they’d feel if a troubadour were suddenly to sing to them from behind the privet hedges. The young men were even more impressed than their womenfolk; they cursed their place of birth and habitation, knowing that it incapacitated them from knowing her; they wasted their mothers’ candles sitting up till two in the morning writing odes to cruel women with raven hair; and all gazed sadly on the old ship in the harbour, and the Spanish main seemed nearer, and those gallant days more realisable than they had ever been before.

  The direct cause of this revival of romance lived, however, unconscious of it. She was genuinely frightened. She said her prayers with great fervour, begging God that He might save Frank, and that she might not be a murderess. She made him soups, she sent him wine, she brought him books, and she sat with him for hours. She thought he had never looked so nice as now — so pale, so aristocratic, so elegantly weak, his head laid upon a cushion, which she had brought him, and when he took her hand and said, “Will you, darling?” and she murmured, “Yes,” then it seemed that the happiness of his life was upon his face.
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br />   Three days after Frank was sitting at his table writing to Mount Rorke, and on the following Sunday he walked to the Manor House to tell Mr. Brookes that he was engaged to his daughter, and to ask his consent. He did not think of his folly, he was too happy; he seemed like one in a quiet dulcet dream; he walked slowly, leaning from time to time against the wooden paling, for he wished to prolong this meditative moment; he saw everything vaguely, and loved all with a quiet fulness of heart; he took in the sense of this village and its life as he had never done before. He compared it with Ireland; Mount Rorke, with its towers, and lakes, and woods arose, and he was grateful that Maggie was going there, yet he was sure that he could not live without sometimes seeing this village where he had found so much happiness.

  His wound had sucked away his strength, the sunlight dazzled him, and feeling a little overcome, and not equal, without pause, to the long interview that awaited him, he stayed awhile in a shady laurel corner, and leaning against a piece of iron railing, watched Mr. Brookes and Mr. Berkins as they paced the tennis lawn to and fro. The old gentleman frequently stopped in his walk to point at the glass houses.