by George Moore
‘But I haven’t told you; I have been writing a good deal lately for newspapers, and have made nearly twenty pounds. That will be all you will want for the present, and I shall be able, I hope, to make sufficient to keep you supplied.’
‘I don’t think that anyone was ever as good as you, Alice. You make me feel ashamed of myself.’
‘I am doing only what anyone else would do if they were called upon. But we have been sitting here a long time now, and before we go back to the tennis-ground we had better arrange what is to be done. When do you propose leaving?’
‘I had better leave at once. It is seven months ago now — no one suspects as yet.’
‘Well, then, when would you like me to send you the money? You can have it at once if you like.’
‘Oh, thanks, dear; mother will give me enough to last me a little while, and I will write to you from Dublin. You are sure no one sees your letters at Brookfield?’
‘Quite sure; there’s not the slightest danger.’ She did not question the advice she had given, and she felt sure that the Reverend Mother, if a proper appeal were made to her common sense, would consent to conceal the girl’s fault. Two months would not be long passing, but the expenses of this time would be heavy, and she, Alice, would have to meet them all. She trembled lest she might fail to do so, and she tried to reckon them up. It would be impossible to get rooms under a pound a week, and to live, no matter how cheaply, would cost at least two pounds; three pounds a week, four threes are twelve! The twenty pounds would scarcely carry her over a month, she would not be well for at least two; and then there was the doctor, the nurse, the flannels for the baby. Alice tried to calculate, thinking plainly and honestly. If a repulsive detail rose suddenly up in her mind, she did not shrink, nor was she surprised to find herself thinking of such things; she did so as a matter of course, keeping her thoughts fixed on the one object of doing her duty towards her friend. And how to do this was the problem that presented itself unceasingly for solution. She felt that somehow she would have to earn twenty pounds within the next month. Out of the Lady’s Paper, in which ‘Notes and Sensations of a Plain Girl at Dublin Castle,’ was still running, she could not hope to make more than thirty shillings a week; a magazine had lately accepted a ten-page story worth, she fancied, about five pounds, but when they would print it and pay her was impossible to say. She could write the editor an imploring letter, asking him to advance her the money. But even then there was another nine pounds to make up. And to do this seemed to her an impossibility. She could not ask her father or mother; she would only do so if the worst came to the worst. She would write paragraphs, articles, short stories, and would send them to every editor in London. One out of three might turn up trumps.
‘GARDNER STREET, ‘MOUNTJOY SQUARE. ‘DARLING ALICE, ‘I have been in Dublin now more than a week. I did not write to you before because I wished to write to tell you that I had done all you told me to do. The first thing I did was to go to the convent. Would you believe it, the new Rev. Mother is Sister Mary who we knew so well at St. Leonards! She has been transferred to the branch convent in Dublin; she was delighted to see me, but the sight of her dear face awoke so many memories, so many old associations, that I burst out crying, and it seemed to me impossible that I should ever be able to find courage to tell her the truth. None will ever know what it cost me to speak the words. They came to me all of a sudden, and I told her everything. I thought she would reproach me and speak bitterly, but she only said, “My poor child, I am sorry you hadn’t strength to resist temptation; your trial is a dreadful one.” She was very, very kind. Her face lighted up when I spoke of you, and she said: “Sweet girl; she was always an angel; one of these days she will come back to us. She is too good for the world.” Then I insisted that it was your idea that I should seek help from the convent, but she said that it was my duty to go to my mother and tell her the whole truth. Oh, my darling Alice, I cannot tell you what a terrible time I went through. We were talking for at least two hours, and it was only with immense difficulty that I at last succeeded in making her understand what kind of person poor mamma is, and how hopeless it would be to expect her to keep any secret, even if her daughter’s honour was in question. I told her how she would run about, talking in her mild unmeaning way of “poor May and that shameful Mr. Scully;” and, at last, the Rev. Mother, as you prophesied she would, saw the matter in its proper light, and she has consented to receive all my letters, and if mother writes, to give her to understand that I am safe within the convent walls. It is very good of her, for I know the awful risk she is wilfully incurring so as to help me out of my trouble.
‘The house I am staying in is nice enough, and the landlady seems a kind woman. The name I go by is Mrs. Brandon (you will not forget to direct your letters so), and I said that my husband was an officer, and had gone out to join his regiment in India. I have a comfortable bedroom on the third floor. There are two windows, and they look out on the street. The time seems as if it would never pass; the twelve hours of the day seem like twelve centuries. I have not even a book to read, and I never go out for fear of being seen. In the evening I put on a thick veil and go for a walk in the back streets. But I cannot go out before nine; it is not dark till then, and I cannot stop out later than ten on account of the men who speak to you. My coloured hair makes me look fast, and I am so afraid of meeting someone I know, that this short hour is as full of misery as those that preceded it. Every passer-by seems to know me, to recognize me, and I cannot help imagining that he or she will be telling my unfortunate story half an hour after in the pitiless drawing-rooms of Merrion Square. Oh, Alice darling, you are the only friend I have in the world. If it were not for you, I believe I should drown myself in the Liffey. No girl was ever so miserable as I. I cannot tell you how I feel, and you cannot imagine how forlorn it all is; and I am so ill. I am always hungry, and always sick, and always longing. Oh, these longings; you may think they are nothing, but they are dreadful. You remember how active I used to be, how I used to run about the tennis-court; now I can scarcely crawl. And the strange sickening fancies: I see things in the shops that tempt me, sometimes it is a dry biscuit, sometimes a basket of strawberries; but whatever it is, I stand and look at it, long for it, until weary of longing and standing with a sort of weight weighing me down, and my stays all rucking up to my neck, I crawl home. There I am all alone; and I sit in the dark, on a wretched hard chair by the window; and I cry; and I watch the summer night and all the golden stars, and I cannot say what I think of during all these long and lonely hours; I only know that I cannot find energy to go to bed. And I never sleep a whole night through; the cramp comes on so terribly that I jump up screaming. Oh, Alice, how I hate him! When I think of it all I see how selfish men are; they never think of us — they only think of themselves. You would scarcely know me if you saw me now; all my complexion — you know what a pretty complexion it was — is all red and mottled. When you saw me a fortnight ago I was all right: it is extraordinary what a change has come about. I think it was the journey and the excitement; there would be no concealing the truth now. It is lucky I left Galway when I did.
‘Mother gave me five pounds on leaving home. My ticket cost nearly thirty shillings, a pound went in cabs and hotel expenses, and my breakfasts brought my bill up yesterday to two pounds — I cannot think how, for I only pay sixteen shillings for my room — and when it was paid I had only a few shillings left. Will you, therefore, send the money you promised, if possible, by return of post? ‘Always affectionately yours, ‘MAY GOULD.’
The tears started to Alice’s eyes as she read the letter. She did not consider if May might have spared her the physical details with which her letter abounded; she did not stay to think of the cause, of the result; for the moment she was numb to ideas and sensations that were not those of humble human pity for humble human suffering: like the waters of a new baptism, pity made her pure and whole, and the false shame of an ancient world fell from her. Leaning her head on her stro
ng, well-shaped hand, she set to arranging her little plans for her friend’s help — plans that were charming for their simplicity, their sweet homeliness. The letter she had just read had come by the afternoon post, and if she were to send May the money she wrote for that evening, it would be necessary to go into Gort to register the letter. Gort was two miles away; and if she asked for the carriage her mother might propose that the letters should be sent in by a special messenger. This of course was impossible, and Alice, for the first time in her life found herself obliged to tell a deliberate lie. For a moment her conscience stood at bay, but she accepted the inevitable and told her mother that she had some MSS. to register, and did not care to entrust them to other hands. It was a consolation to know that eighteen pounds were safely despatched, but she was bitterly unhappy, and the fear that money might be wanting in the last and most terrible hours bound her to her desk as with a chain; and when her tired and exhausted brain ceased to formulate phrases, the picture of the lonely room, the night walks, and the suffering of the jaded girl, stared her in the face with a terrible distinctness. Her only moments of gladness were when the post brought a cheque from London. Sometimes they were for a pound, sometimes for fifteen shillings. Once she received five pounds ten — it was for her story. On the 10th of September she received the following letter:
‘DARLING ALICE, ‘Thanks a thousand times for your last letter, and the money enclosed. It came in the nick of time, for I was run almost to my last penny. I did not write before, because I didn’t feel in the humour to do anything. Thank goodness! I’m not sick any more, though I don’t know that it isn’t counterbalanced by the dreadful faintness and the constant movement. Isn’t it awful to sit here day after day, watching myself, and knowing the only relief I shall get will be after such terrible pain? I woke up last night crying with the terror of it. Cervassi says there are cases on record of painless confinements, and in my best moods I think mine is to be one of them. I know it is wrong to write all these things to a good girl like you, but I think talking about it is part of the complaint, and poor sinner me has no one to talk to. Do you remember my old black cashmere? I’ve been altering it till there’s hardly a bit of the original body left; but now the skirt is adding to my troubles by getting shorter and shorter in front. It is now quite six inches off the ground, and instead of fastening it I have to pin the placket-hole, and then it falls nearly right. . . . Only three weeks longer, and then. . . But there, I won’t look forward, because I know I am going to die, and all the accounting for it, and everything else, will be on your shoulders. Good-bye, dear; I shan’t write again, at least not till afterwards. And if there is an afterward, I shall never be able to thank you properly; but still I think it will be a weight off you. Is it so, dear? Do you wish I were dead? I know you don’t. It was unkind to write that last line; I will scratch it out. You will not be angry, dear. I am too wretched to know what I am writing, and I want to lie down. ‘Always affectionately yours, ‘MAY GOULD.’
Outside the air was limpid with sunlight, and the newly mown meadow was golden in the light of evening. The autumn-coloured foliage of the chestnuts lay mysteriously rich and still, harmonizing in measured tones with the ruddy tints of the dim September sunset. The country dozed as if satiated with summer love. Heavy scents were abroad — the pungent odours of the aftermath. A high baritone voice broke the languid silence, and, in embroidered smoking-jacket and cap, Mr. Barton twanged his guitar. Milord had been thrown down amid the hay; and Mrs. Barton and Olive were showering it upon him. The old gentleman’s legs were in the air.
Crushing the letter, Alice’s hands fell on the table; she burst into tears. But work was more vital than tears; and, taking up her pen, she continued her story — penny journal fiction of true love and unending happiness in the end. A month later she received this note:
‘DEAREST, ‘Just a line in pencil — I mustn’t sit up — to tell you it is all over, and all I said was “Thank God, thank God!” over and over again, as each pain went. It is such a relief; but I mustn’t write much. It is such a funny screwed-up-looking baby, and I don’t feel any of those maternal sentiments that you read about — at least not yet. And it always cries just when I am longing to go to sleep. Thank you again and again for all you have done for me and been to me. I feel awfully weak. ‘Always affectionately yours, ‘MAY GOULD.’
XXIV
THEN ALICE HEARD that the baby was dead, and that a little money would be required to bury it. Another effort was made, the money was sent; and the calm of the succeeding weeks was only disturbed by an uneasy desire to see May back in Galway, and hear her say that her terrible secret was over and done with for ever. One day she was startled by a quick trampling of feet in the corridor, and May rushed into the room. She threw herself into Alice’s arms and kissed her with effusion, with tears. The girls looked at each other long and nervously. One was pale and over-worn, her spare figure was buttoned into a faded dress, and her hair was rolled into a plain knot. The other was superb with health, and her face was full of rose-bloom. She was handsomely dressed in green velvet, and her copper hair flamed and flashed beneath a small bonnet with mauve strings.
‘Oh, Alice, how tired and pale you look! You have been working too hard, and all for me! How can I thank you? I shall never be able to thank you — I cannot find words to tell you how grateful I am — but I am grateful, Alice, indeed I am.’
‘I am sure you are, dear. I did my best for you, it is true; and thank heaven I succeeded, and no one knows — I do not think that anyone even suspects.’
‘No, not a soul. We managed it very well, didn’t we? And the Reverend Mother behaved splendidly — she just took the view that you said she would. She saw that no good would come of telling mamma about me when I made her understand that if a word were said my misfortune would be belled all over the country in double-quick time. But, Alice dear, I had a terrible time of it, two months waiting in that little lodging, afraid to go out for fear someone would recognize me; it was awful. And often I hadn’t enough to eat, for when you are in that state you can’t eat everything, and I was afraid to spend any money. You did your best to keep me supplied, dear, good guardian angel that you are.’ Then the impulsive girl flung herself on Alice’s shoulders, and kissed her. ‘But there were times when I was hard up — oh, much more hard up than you thought I was, for I didn’t tell you everything; if I had, you would have worried yourself into your grave. Oh, I had a frightful time of it! If one is married one is petted and consoled and encouraged; but alone in a lodging — oh, it was frightful.’
‘And what about the poor baby?’ said Alice.
‘The poor little thing died, as I wrote you, about ten days after it was born. I nursed it, and I was sorry for it. I really was; but of course . . . well, it seems a hard thing to say, but I don’t know what I should have done with it if it had lived. Life isn’t so happy, is it, even under the best of circumstances?’
The conversation came to a sudden close. At last the nervous silence that intervened was broken by May:
‘We were speaking about money. I will repay you all I owe you some day, Alice dear. I will save up all the money I can get out of mother. She is such a dear old thing, but I cannot understand her. Not a penny did she send me for the first six weeks, and then she sent me £25; and it was lucky she did, for the doctor’s bill was something tremendous. And I bought this dress and bonnet with what was left . . . I ought to have repaid you first thing, but I forgot it until I had ordered the dress.’
‘I assure you it does not matter, May; I shall never take the money from you. If I did, it would take away all the pleasure I have had in serving you.’
‘Oh, but I will insist, Alice dear; I could not think of such a thing. But there’s no use in discussing that point until I get the money. . . . Tell me, what do you think of my bonnet?’
‘I think it very nice indeed, and I never saw you looking better.’
And thus ended May Gould’s Dublin adventure. It was scarc
ely spoken of again, and when they met at a ball given by the officers stationed in Galway, Alice was astonished to find that she experienced no antipathy whatever towards this rich-blooded young person. ‘My dear guardian angel, come and sit with me in this corner; I’d sooner talk to you than anyone — we won’t go down yet a while — we’ll make the men wait;’ and when she put her arms round Alice’s waist and told her the last news of Violet and her Marquis, Alice abandoned herself to the caress and heard that thirty years ago the late Marquis had entered a grocer’s shop in Galway to buy a pound of tea for an importuning beggar: ‘And what do you think, my dear? — It was Mrs. Scully who served it out to him; and do you know what they are saying? — that it is all your fault that Olive did not marry Kilcarney.’
‘My fault?’
‘Your fault, because you gave the part of the beggar-maid to Violet, and if Olive had played the beggar-maid and hadn’t married Kilcarney, the fault would have been laid at your door just the same.’
The pale cheeks of Lord Rosshill’s seven daughters waxed a hectic red; the Ladies Cullen grew more angular, and smiled and cawed more cruelly; Mrs. Barton, the Brennans, and Duffys cackled more warmly and continuously; and Bertha, the terror of the débutantes, beat the big drum more furiously than ever. The postscripts to her letters were particularly terrible: ‘And to think that the grocer’s daughter should come in for all this honour. It is she who will turn up her nose at us at the Castle next year.’ ‘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.
