by George Moore
‘But you, Alice; you who are so noble, so pure, so lofty-minded, you would not soil yourself by giving way to such a sentiment. Write! you will write, and tell me that what I saw in vision was a lie, an abominable lie! Nay, you do not love Mr. Harding. You will not marry him; surely you will not. Oh! to be left here alone, never to see you again — I could not bear it, I should die. You will not leave me to die, Alice dear, you will not; write and tell me you will not. And what grieves me doubly is that it must seem to you, dear, that I am only thinking of myself. I am not; I think of you, I wish to save you from what must be a life of misery and, worse still, of degradation; for every man is a degradation when he approaches a woman. I know you couldn’t bear up against this; you are too refined, too pure — I can sympathize with you. I know, poor little cripple though I be, the horrors of married life. I know what men are — you smile your own kind, sweet smile; I see it as I write; but you are wrong: I know nothing of men in particular, but I know what the sex is — I know nothing of individuals, but I know what life is. The very fact of being forced to live apart has helped me to realize how horrible life is, and how the passions of men make it vile and abominable. All their tender little words and attentions are but lust in disguise. I hate them! I could whip, I could beat, I would torture them; and when I had done my worst I should not have done enough to punish them for the wrongs they have done to my sex.
‘I know, Alice dear, I am writing violently, that I am letting my temper get the better of me, and this is very wrong; you have often told me it is very wrong; but I cannot help it, my darling, when I think of the danger you are in. I cannot tell you how, but I do know you are in danger; something, some instinct has put me in communication with you: there are moments when I see you, yes, see you sitting by that man — I see you now: — the scene is a long blue drawing-room all aglow with gold mirrors and wax candles — he is sitting by you, I see you smiling upon him — my blood boils, Alice — I fear I am going mad; my head drops on the table, and I strive to shut out the odious sight, but I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. . . .
‘I am calmer now: you will forgive me, Alice dear? I know I am wrong to write to you in this way, but there are moments when I realize things with such horrible vividness that I am, as it were, maddened with pain. Sometimes I awake in the night, and then I see life in all its hideous nakedness, revealed, as it were, by a sudden flash of lightning. Oh, it is terrible to think we are thus. Good-bye, dear, I know you will forgive me, and I hope you will write at once, and will not leave me in suspense: that is the worst torture. With love to our friends Olive, May, and Violet, believe me, darling Alice, ‘Yours affectionately, ‘CECILIA CULLEN.’
She read steadily, word by word, and then let the letter fall.
Her vision was not precise, but there were flashes of sun in it, and her thoughts loomed and floated away. She thought of herself, of Harding, of their first meeting. The first time she had seen him he was sitting in the same place and in the same chair as she was sitting in now. She remembered the first words that had been spoken: the scene was as clear to her as if it were etched upon her brain; and as she mused she thought of the importance of that event. Harding was to her what a mountain is to the level plain. From him she now looked forward and back. ‘So people say that I am in love with him! well, supposing I were, I do not know that I should feel ashamed of myself.’
The reflection was an agreeable one, and in it her thoughts floated away like red-sailed barges into the white mists that veil with dreamy enchantment the wharves and the walls of an ancient town. What did she know of him? Nothing! He was to her as much, but no more, than the author of a book in which she was deeply interested: with this difference: — she could hear him reply to her questions; but his answers were only like other books, and revealed nothing of his personality. She would have liked to have known the individual man surrounded with his individual hopes and sufferings, but of these she knew nothing. They had talked of all things, but it seemed to her that of the real man she had never had a glimpse. Never did he unbend, never did he lift the mask he wore. He was interesting, but very unhuman, and he paraded his ideas and his sneers as the lay figures did the mail-armour on the castle stairway. She did not know if he were a good or a bad man; she fancied he was not very good, and then she grew angry with herself for suspecting him. But honest or dishonest, she was sure he could love no one; and she strove to recall his face. She could remember nothing but the cold merciless eyes — eyes that were like the palest blue porcelain: ‘But how ungrateful I am,’ thought the girl, and she checked the bitter flow of reproaches that rose in her mind.
Two old ladies sat on the sofa under the window, their white hair and white caps coming out very white upon the grey Irish day; and around the ottoman the young ladies, Gladys and Zoe Brennan, one of the Miss Duffys, and the girl in red, yawned over circulating novels, longing that a man might come in — not with hope that he would interest them, but because they were accustomed to think of all time as wasted that was not spent in talking to a man.
Nor were they awakened from their languid hopes until Olive came rushing into the room with a large envelope in her hand.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, ‘you have got a letter from Cecilia. What does she say? I got one this morning from Barnes;’ and, bending her head, Olive whispered in Alice’s ear: ‘She says that everyone is talking in Galway of when I shall be a marchioness!’
‘Is that the letter?’ asked Alice innocently.
‘No, you silly, this is a Castle invitation.’
The Brennans and the girl in red looked up.
‘Ah, is it for to-night or to-morrow?’ said the latter.
‘For to-morrow.’
‘Now, I wonder if there will be one for me. Is it to dinner or to the dance?’
‘To dinner.’
‘Ah, really . . . yes, very lucky.’ Her eyes fell, and her look was expressive of her deep disappointment. A dance — yes, but a dinner and a dance! Then she continued: ‘Ah, the Castle treats us all very badly. I am glad sometimes when I hear the Land League abusing it. We come up here, and spend all our money on dresses, and we get nothing for it except two State balls, and it is no compliment to ask us to them — they are obliged to. But what do you think of my little coat? It is this that keeps me warm,’ and Miss O’Reilly held out her sealskin for the company to feel the texture. For the last three weeks she had not failed, on all occasions, to call attention to this garment— ‘Signor Parisina had said it was lovely.’ Here she sighed — Signor Parisina had left the hotel. ‘And I have a new dress coming home — it is all red — a cardinal silk — you know nothing but red suits me!’
‘Is the hall-porter distributing the invitations?’ asked Gladys Brennan. ‘Did he give you yours?’
‘No, ours was, of course, directed to mamma; I found it in her room.’
‘Then perhaps—’ Zoe did not finish the sentence, and both sisters rolled up their worsted-work preparatory to going upstairs.
In Dublin, during six weeks of the year, the arrival of these large official envelopes is watched with eagerness. These envelopes are the balm of Gilead; and the Land League and the hopelessness of matchmaking are merged and lost for a moment in an exquisite thrill of triumph or despair. An invitation to the Castle means much. The greyheaded official who takes you down to dinner may bore you, and, at the dance, you may find yourself without a partner; but the delight of asking your friends if you may expect to meet them on such a night, of telling them afterwards of your successes, are the joys of Dublin. And, armed with their invitation, the Bartons scored heavily over the Scullys and the Goulds, who were only asked to the dance.
‘And what will the dinner be like, mamma?’ asked Olive.
‘It will be very grand. Lord Cowper does things in very good style indeed; and our names will be given in the papers. But I don’t think it will amuse you, dear. All the officials have to be asked — judges, police-officers, etc. You will probably go down with some old fellow of si
xty: but that can’t be helped. At the dance, after, we’ll see the Marquis.’
‘I told you, mamma, didn’t I, that Barnes wrote that everybody in Galway said he was in love with me, and had proposed?’
‘You did, dear; and it does no harm for the report to have got about, for if a thing gets very much spoken of, it forces a man to come to the point. You will wear your red tulle. I don’t know that you look better in anything else.’
Whatever Mrs. Barton’s faults may have been, she did her duty, as she conceived it, by her daughter; and during the long dinner, through the leaves of the flowering-plants, she watched her Olive anxiously. A hundred and twenty people were present. Mothers and eligible daughters, judges, lords, police-officers, earls, poor-law inspectors, countesses, and Castle officials. Around the great white-painted, gold-listed walls the table, in the form of a horseshoe, was spread. In the soothing light of the shaded lamps the white glitter of the piled-up silver danced over the talking faces, and descended in silvery waves into the bosoms of the women. Salmon and purple-coloured liveries passed quickly; and in the fragrance of soup and the flavours of sherry, in the lascivious pleasing of the waltz tunes that Liddell’s band poured from a top gallery, the goodly company of time-servers, panders, and others forgot their fears of the Land League and the doom that was now waxing to fulness.
To the girls the dinner seemed interminable, but at the ‘private dance’ afterwards those who were known in official circles, or were fortunate enough to meet their friends, amused themselves. It took place in the Throne-Room. As the guests arrived they scanned each other narrowly. People who had known each other from childhood upwards, as they met on the landing, affected a look of surprise: ‘Oh, so you are here? I wonder how you got your invitation? Well, I suppose you are better than I took you to be!’ Acquaintances saluted each other more cordially than was their wont: he or she who had dined at the Castle took his or her place at once among the élite; he or she who had come to dance was henceforth considered worthy of a bow in Grafton Street. For Dublin is a city without a conviction, without an opinion. Things are right and wrong according to the dictum of the nearest official. If it be not absolutely ill-bred to say you think this, or are inclined to take such or such a view, it is certainly more advisable to say that the Attorney-General thinks so, or that on one occasion you heard the State Steward, the Chamberlain, or any other equally distinguished underling, express this or that opinion. Castle tape is worn in time of mourning and in the time of feasting. Every gig-man in the Kildare Street wears it in his buttonhole, and the ladies of Merrion Square are found to be gartered with it.
Mrs. Barton’s first thought was to get Olive partners. Milord and Lord Rosshill were sent hither and thither, and with such good result that the whole evening the beauty was beset with A.D.C.’s. But the Marquis had danced three times with Violet Scully, and Mrs. Barton vented her anger on poor Alice. The girl knew no one, nor was there time to introduce her to men. She was consequently sent off with Milord to see where the Marquis was hiding; and she was commissioned to tell her sister to answer thus when Lord Kilcarney asked for another dance: ‘I am engaged, cher marquis, but for you, of course, I shall have to throw some poor fellow over.’ Mrs. Barton did not know how to play a waiting game. Her tactics were always to grapple with the enemy. She was a Hannibal: she risked all to gain all. Mrs. Scully, on the contrary, watched the combat from afar — as Moltke did the German lines when they advanced upon Paris.
The Bartons were not invited to the next private dance, which was annoying, and after long conjecturing as to the enemy that had served them this trick, they resigned themselves to the inevitable, and began to look forward to the State ball given on the following Monday.
As they mounted the stairway Mrs. Barton said:
‘You know we turn to the left this time and enter Patrick’s Hall by this end; the other entrance is blocked up by the daïs — only the three and four season girls stand about the pillars. There they are drawn up in battle array.’
‘I declare Olive Barton is here!’ whispered the redoubtable Bertha; ‘this doesn’t look as if the beaux were coming forward in their hundreds. It is said that Lord Kilcarney has given her up for Violet Scully.’
‘I’m not a bit surprised,’ said the girl in red; ‘and, now I think of it, all the beauties come to the same end. I’ll just give her a couple more Castle seasons. It is that that will pull the fine feathers out of her.’
St. Patrick’s Hall was now a huge democratic crush. All the little sharp glances of the ‘private dances,’ ‘What, you here!’ were dispensed with as useless, for all were within their rights in being at the ball. They pushed, laughed, danced. They met as they would have met in Rotten Row, and they took their amusement with the impartiality of pleasure-seekers jigging and drinking in a marketplace on fair-day. On either side of the Hall there were ascending benches; these were filled with chaperons and débutantes, and over their heads the white-painted, gold-listed walls were hung with garlands of evergreen oak interwoven with the celebrated silver shields, the property of the Cowper family, and in front of the curtains hanging about the daïs, the maroon legs of His Excellency, and the teeth and diamonds of Her Excellency, were seen passing to and fro, and up and down to the music of oblivion that Liddell dispensed with a flowing arm.
‘Now aren’t the Castle balls very nice?’ said Bertha; ‘and how are you amusing yourself?’
‘Oh, very much indeed,’ replied the poor débutante who had not even a brother to take her for a walk down the room or to the buffet for an ice.
‘And is it true, Bertha,’ asks the fierce aunt— ‘you know all the news — that Mr. Jones has been transferred to another ship and has gone off to the Cape?’
‘Yes, yes,’ replied the girl; ‘a nice end to her beau; and after dinnering him up the whole summer, too.’
Alice shuddered. What were they but snowflakes born to shine for a moment and then to fade, to die, to disappear, to become part of the black, the foul-smelling slough of mud below? The drama in muslin was again unfolded, and she could read each act; and there was a ‘curtain’ at the end of each. The first was made of young, hopeful faces, the second of arid solicitation, the third of the bitter, malignant tongues of Bertha Duffy and her friend. She had begun to experience the worst horrors of a Castle ball. She was sick of pity for those around her, and her lofty spirit resented the insult that was being offered to her sex.
‘Have you been long here, Miss Barton?’ She looked up. Harding was by her! ‘I have been looking out for you, but the crowd is so great that it is hard to find anyone.’
‘I think we arrived about a quarter to eleven,’ Alice answered.
Then, after a pause, Harding said: ‘Will you give me this waltz?’ She assented, and, as they made their way through the dancers, he added: ‘But I believe you do not care about dancing. If you’d prefer it, we might go for a walk down the room. Perhaps you’d like an ice? This is the way to the buffet.’
But Alice and Harding did not stop long there; they were glad to leave the heat of gas, the odour of sauces, the effervescence of the wine, the detonations of champagne, the tumult of laughter, the racing of plates, the heaving of bosoms, the glittering of bodices, for the peace and the pale blue refinement of the long blue drawing-room. How much of our sentiments and thoughts do we gather from our surroundings; and the shining blue of the turquoise-coloured curtains, the pale dead-blue of the Louis XV. furniture, and the exquisite fragility of the glass chandeliers, the gold mirrors rutilant with the light of some hundreds of tall wax candles, were illustrative of the light dreams and delicate lassitude that filled the souls of the women as they lay back whispering to their partners, the crinolettes lifting the skirts over the edges of the sofas. Here the conversation seems serious, there it is smiling, and broken by the passing and repassing of a fan.
‘Only four days more of Dublin,’ said Harding; ‘I have settled, or rather the fates have settled, that I am to leave next Saturday.�
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‘And where are you going? to London?’
‘Yes, to London. I am sorry I am leaving so soon; but it can’t be helped. I have met many nice people here — some of whom I shall not be able to forget.’
‘You speak as if it were necessary to forget them — it is surely always better to remember.’
‘I shall remember you.’
‘Do you think you will?’
At this moment only one thing in the world seemed to be of much real importance — that the man now sitting by her side should not be taken away from her. To know that he existed, though far from her, would be almost enough — a sort of beacon-light — a light she might never reach to, but which would guide her . . . whither?
In no century have men been loved so implicitly by women as in the nineteenth; nor could this be otherwise, for putting aside the fact that the natural wants of love have become a nervous erethism in the struggle that a surplus population of more than two million women has created, there are psychological reasons that to-day more than ever impel women to shrink from the intellectual monotony of their sex, and to view with increasing admiration the male mind; for as the gates of the harem are being broken down, and the gloom of the female mind clears, it becomes certain that woman brings a loftier reverence to the shrine of man than she has done in any past age, seeing, as she now does, in him the incarnation of the freedom of which she is vaguely conscious and which she is perceptibly acquiring. So sets the main current that is bearing civilization along; but beneath the great feminine tide there is an undercurrent of hatred and revolt. This is particularly observable in the leaders of the movement; women who in the tumult of their aspirations, and their passionate yearnings towards the new ideal, and the memory of the abasement their sex have been in the past, and are still being in the present, subjected to, forget the laws of life, and with virulent virtue and protest condemn love — that is to say, love in the sense of sexual intercourse — and proclaim a higher mission for woman than to be the mother of men: and an adjuvant, unless corrected by sanative qualities of a high order, is, of course, found in any physical defect. But as the corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments of Alice Barton and Lady Cecilia Cullen were examined fully in the beginning of this chapter, it is only necessary to here indicate the order of ideas — the moral atmosphere of the time — to understand the efflorescence of the two minds, and to realize how curiously representative they are of this last quarter of the nineteenth century.
