by George Moore
‘Sit down here by me, Alice; I want to talk to you.’
‘The doctor has forbidden you to talk, dear; he says you must have perfect rest and quiet.’
‘I must talk a little to you; if I didn’t I should go mad.’
‘Well, what is it, dear?’
‘I will tell you presently,’ said the sick girl, glancing at Barnes.
‘You can tidy up the room afterwards, Barnes; Miss Olive wants to talk to me now.’
‘Oh, Alice, tell me,’ cried the girl, when the servant had left the room, ‘I don’t want to ask mamma — she won’t tell me the exact truth; but you will. Tell me what the doctor said. . . . Did he say I was going to die?’
‘Going to die? Olive, who ever heard of such a thing? You really must not give way to such fancies.’
‘Well, tell me what he said.’
‘He said that you had received a severe nervous shock, that you had been subjected to several hours’ exposure, that you must take great care of yourself, and, above all, have perfect rest and quiet, and not excite yourself, and not talk.’
‘Is that all he said? Then he cannot know how ill I feel; perhaps I ought to see another doctor. But I don’t believe anyone could do me much good. Oh, I feel wretchedly ill, and somehow I seem to know I am going to die! It would be very horrible to die; but young girls no older than I have died — have been cut off in the beginning of their life. And we have seen nothing of life, only a few balls and parties. It would be terrible to die so soon. When Violet carried off the Marquis I felt so bitterly ashamed that I thought I would have liked to die; but not now — now I know that Edward loves me I would not care to die; it would be terrible to die before I was married. Wouldn’t it, Alice? . . . But you don’t answer me; did you never think about death?’
Then, as the thin wailing voice sank into her ears, Alice started from her dreams, and she strove to submit her attention to her sister.
‘Yes, dear, of course I have. Death is, no doubt, a very terrible thing, but we can do no good by thinking of it.’
‘Oh yes, we should, Alice, for this is not the only world — there is another and a better one; and, as mamma says, and as religion says, we are only here to try and get a good place in it. You are surprised to hear me speak like this; you think I never think of anything but the colour of a bonnet-string, but I do.’
‘I am sure you do, Olive; I never doubted it; but I wish you would now do what the doctor orders, and refrain from talking and exciting yourself, and try and get well. You may then think of death and other gloomy things as much as you like.’
‘You don’t understand, Alice; one can’t think of death, then — one has so much else to think of; one is so taken up with other ideas. It is only when one is ill that one really begins to see what life is. You have never been ill, and you don’t know how terribly near death seems to have come — very near. Perhaps I ought to see the priest; it would be just as well, just in case I should die. Don’t you think so?’
‘I don’t think there is any more danger of your dying now than there was a month ago, dear, and I am sure you can have nothing on your mind that demands immediate confession,’ she said, her voice trembling a little.
‘Oh yes, I have, Alice, and a very great deal; I have been very wicked.’
‘Very wicked!’
‘Well, I know you aren’t pious, Alice, and perhaps you don’t believe there is harm in such things, but I do; and I know it was very wrong, and perhaps a mortal sin, to try to run away with Edward. But I loved him so very dearly, and I was so tired of staying at home and being taken out to parties. And when you are in love with a man you forget everything. At least I did; and when he asked to kiss me I couldn’t refuse. You won’t tell anyone, Alice dear, that I told you this.’ Alice shook her head, and Olive continued, in spite of all that the doctor had said:
‘But you don’t know how lonely I feel at home; you never feel lonely, I dare say, for you only think of your books and papers, and don’t realize what a disgrace it would be if I didn’t marry, and after all the trouble that mamma has taken. But I don’t know what will become of me now. I’m going to be dreadfully ill, and when I get well I shall be pretty no longer; I am sure I am looking wretchedly. I must see myself — fetch the glass, Alice, Alice.’
Olive lay whining and calling for her sister, and when Dr. Reed came he ordered several inches of the pale silky hair to be cut away and a cold lotion to be applied to the forehead, and some sliced lemons were given to her to suck.
The clear blue eyes were dull, the breathing quick, the skin dry and hot; and on the following day four leeches had to be applied to her ankle. They relieved her somewhat, and, when she had taken her draught, she sank to sleep. But as the night grew denser, Alice was suddenly awakened by someone speaking wildly in her ear: ‘Take me away, dear! I am sick of home; I want to get away from all these spiteful girls. I know they are laughing at me because Violet cut me out with the Marquis. We shall be married, shan’t we, the moment we arrive in Dublin? It’s horrible to be married at the registrar’s, but it’s better than not being married at all. But do you think they will catch us up? It would be dreadful to be taken back home, I couldn’t bear it. Oh, do drive on; we don’t seem to be moving. You see that strange tree on the right, we haven’t passed it yet; I don’t think we ever shall. Whip up that bay horse; don’t you see he is turning round, wants to go back? I am sure that this isn’t the road; that man at the corner told you a lie. I know he was mocking at us — I saw it in his eye. . . . Look, look, Edward! Oh, look — it is papa, or Lord Dungory, I can’t tell which, he won’t lift his cloak.’ And then the vision would fade, and she would fancy herself in the wood, arguing once again with Mrs. Lawler. ‘No, what you say isn’t true; he never loved you. How could he? You are an old woman. Let me pass — let me pass. Why do you speak to me? We don’t visit, we never did visit you. No; it was not at our house you met Edward. You were on the streets; and Edward shall not, he could not, think of running away with you — will you, darling? Oh, help me, help me out of this dreadful wood. I want to go home, but I can’t walk. That terrible bird is still watching me, and I dare not pass that tree till you drive it away.’
The two beds, with their white curtains and brass crowns, showed through the pale obscurity, broken only by the red-glowing basin where a night-light burnt, and the long tongues of flame that the blazing peat scattered from time to time across the darkened ceiling. The solitude of the sleeping house grew momentarily more intense in Alice’s brain, and she trembled as she strove to soothe her sister, and covered the hot feverish arms over with the bedclothes.
‘What sort of night has Olive had?’ Mrs. Barton asked when she came in about eight.
‘Not a very quiet one; I am afraid she’s a little delirious.’
‘Dr. Reed promised to be here early. How do you feel, dear?’ Mrs. Barton asked, leaning over the bed.
‘Oh, very ill; I can scarcely breathe, and I have such a pain in my side.’
‘Your lips look very sore, dear; do they hurt you?’ — Olive only moaned dismally — and, looking anxiously at her elder daughter, she said:
‘And you, too, Alice, are not looking well. You are tired, and mustn’t sit up another night with your sister. To-night I’ll take your place.’
‘Oh, mother, no! I assure you it is a pleasure to me to nurse Olive. I am very well indeed; do not think about me.’
‘Indeed, I will think about you, and you must do as I tell you. I’ll look after Olive, and you must try and get a good night’s rest We will take it in turns to nurse her. And now come down to breakfast. Barnes, you’ll not think of leaving Miss Olive until we come back; and, if any change occurs, ring for me immediately.’
When Dr. Reed arrived, Alice was again sitting by the bedside.
‘And how is our patient to-day?’
‘I cannot say she is any better; she has a distressing cough, and last night I am afraid she was a little delirious.’
‘Ah,
you say the cough is distressing?’
‘I am afraid I must call it distressing; is that a very bad sign?’
‘Probably there is not much wrong, but it would be better to ascertain the condition of the patient, and then we may be able to do something to relieve her.’
The doctor drew a stethoscope from his pocket, and they lifted the patient into a sitting position.
‘I should like to examine her chest;’ and his fingers moved to unfasten her night-gown.
‘Don’t expose me,’ she murmured feebly.
‘Now, Olive dear, remember it is only the doctor; let him examine you.’
Olive’s eyes were a dull filmy blue, the lips were covered with sores, and there was a redness over the cheekbones — not the hectic flush of phthisis, but a dusky redness. And the patient was so weak that during the stethoscopic examination her head fell from side to side as she was moved, and when the doctor pressed her right side her moans were pregnant with pain.
‘Now let me see the tongue. Dry and parched.’
‘Shall I die, doctor?’ the girl asked feebly and plaintively as she sank amidst the pillows.
‘Die! no, not if you take care of yourself and do what you are told.’
‘But tell me, Dr. Reed,’ Alice asked. ‘You can tell me the truth.’
‘She’ll get well if she takes care of herself. It is impossible to say. No one can predict the turn pneumonia will take.’
‘Pneumonia! What is that?’
‘Congestion of the lungs, or rather an advanced stage of it. It is more common in men than in women, and it is the consequence of long exposure to wet and cold.’
‘Is it very dangerous?’
‘Very; and now let me tell you that it is all-important that the temperature of the room should not be allowed to vary. I attended a case of it some three or four miles from here, but the damp of the cabin was so great that it was impossible to combat the disease. The cottage, or rather hovel, was built on the edge of a soft spongy bog, and so wet was it that the woman had to sweep the water every morning from the floor, where it collected in great pools. I am now going to visit an evicted family, who are living in a partially roofed shed fenced up by the roadside. The father is down with fever, and lies shivering, with nothing to drink but cold water. His wife told me that last week it rained so heavily that she had to get up three times in the night to wring the sheets out.’
‘And why were they evicted?’
‘Oh, that is a long story; but it is a singularly characteristic one. In the first place, he was an idle fellow; he got into difficulties and owed his landlord three years’ rent. Then he got into bad hands, and was prevented from coming to terms with his landlord. There was a lot of jobbing going on between the priest and the village grocer, and finally it was arranged that the latter should pay off the existing debt if the landlord could be forced into letting him the farm at a “fair rent,” that is to say, thirty per cent reduction on the old rent. In recognition of his protecting influence, the priest was to take a third of the farm off the grocer’s hands, and the two were then to conjointly rack-rent poor Murphy for the remaining third portion, which he would be allowed to retain for a third of the original rent; but the National League heard of their little tricks, and now the farm is boycotted, and Murphy is dying in the ditch for the good of his counthry.’
‘I thought boycotting was ended, that the League had lost all power.’
‘It has and it hasn’t. Sometimes a man takes a farm and keeps it in defiance of his neighbours; sometimes they hunt him out of it. It is hard to come to a conclusion, for when in one district you hear of rents being paid and boycotted farms letting freely, in another, only a few miles away, the landlords are giving reductions, and there are farms lying waste that no one dare look at. In my opinion the fire is only smouldering, and when the Coercion Act expires the old organization will rise up as strong and as triumphant as before. This is a time of respite for both parties.’
The conversation then came to a sudden pause. Alice felt it would be out of place for her to speak her sympathies for the Nationalistic cause, and she knew it would be unfair to lead the doctor to express his. So at the end of a long silence, during which each divined the other’s thoughts, she said:
‘I suppose you see a great deal of the poor and the miseries they endure?’
‘I have had good opportunities of studying them. Before I came here I spent ten years in the poorest district in Donegal. I am sure there wasn’t a gentleman’s house within fifteen miles of me.’
‘And didn’t you feel very lonely?’
‘Yes, I did, but one gets so used to solitude that to return to the world, after having lived long in the atmosphere of one’s own thoughts, is painful. The repugnance that grows on those who live alone to hearing their fellow-creatures express their ideas is very remarkable. It must be felt to be understood; and I have often wondered how it was that I never met it in a novel.’
‘It would be very difficult to write. Do you ever read fiction?’
‘Yes, and enjoy it. In my little home amid the northern bogs, I used to look forward when I had finished writing, to reading a story.’
‘What were you writing?’
‘A book.’
‘A book!’ exclaimed Alice, looking suddenly pleased and astonished.
‘Yes, but not a work of fiction — I am afraid I am too prosaic an individual for that — a medical work.’
‘And have you finished your book?’
‘Yes, it is finished, and I am glad to say it is in the hands of a London publisher. We have not yet agreed about the price, but I hope and believe that, directly and indirectly, it will lead to putting me into a small London practice.’
‘And then you will leave us?’
‘I am afraid so. There are many friends I shall miss — that I shall be very sorry to leave, but—’
‘Oh, of course it would not do to miss such a chance.’
They fell to discussing the patient, and when the doctor left, Alice proceeded to carry out his instructions concerning the patient, and, these being done, she sat down by the bedside and continued her thoughts of him with a sense of pleasure. She remembered that she had always liked him. Yes, it was a liking that dated as far back as the spinsters’ ball at Ballinasloe. He was the only man there in whom she had taken the slightest interest. They were sitting together on the stairs when that poor fellow was thrown down and had his leg broken. She remembered how she had enjoyed meeting him at tennis-parties, and how often she had walked away with him from the players through the shrubberies; and above all she could not forget — it was a long sweet souvenir — the beautiful afternoon she had spent with him, sitting on the rock, the day of the picnic at Kinvarra Castle. She had forgotten, or rather she had never noticed, that he was a short, thick-set, middle-aged man, that he wore mutton-chop whiskers, and that his lips were overhung by a long dark moustache. His manners were those of an unpolished and somewhat commonplace man. But while she thought of his grey eyes her heart was thrilled with gladness, and as she dreamed of his lonely life of labour and his ultimate hopes of success, all her old sorrows and fears seemed to have evaporated. Then suddenly and with the unexpectedness of an apparition the question presented itself: Did she like him better than Harding? Alice shrank from the unpleasantness of the thought, and did not force herself to answer it, but busied herself with attending to her sister’s wants.
While the dawn of Alice’s happiness, Olive lay suffering in all the dire humility of the flesh. Hourly her breathing grew shorter and more hurried, her cough more frequent, and the expectoration that accompanied it darker and thicker in colour. The beautiful eyes were now turgid and dull, the lids hung heavily over a line of filmy blue, and a thick scaly layer of bloody tenacious mucus persistently accumulated and covered the tiny and once almost jewel-like teeth. For three or four days these symptoms knew no abatement; and it was over this prostrated body, weakened and humiliated by illness, that Alice and Dr. Ree
d read love in each other’s eyes, and it was about this poor flesh that their hands were joined as they lifted Olive out of the recumbent position she had slipped into, and built up the bowed-in pillows. And as it had once been all Olive in Brookfield, it was now all Alice; the veil seemed suddenly to have slipped from all eyes, and the exceeding worth of this plain girl was at last recognized. Mrs. Barton’s presence at the bedside did not soothe the sufferer; she grew restless and demanded her sister. And the illness continued, her life in the balance till the eighth day. It was then that she took a turn for the better; the doctor pronounced her out of danger, and two days after she lay watching Alice and Dr. Reed talking in the window. ‘Were they talking about her?’ she asked herself. She did not think they were. It seemed to her that each was interested in the other. ‘Laying plans,’ the sick girl said to herself, ‘for themselves.’ At these words her senses dimmed, and when she awoke she had some difficulty in remembering what she had seen.
XXVII
‘AH, CE CHER Milord, comme il est beau, comme il est parfait!’ exclaimed Mrs. Barton, as she led him to his chair and poured out his glass of sherry.
But there was a gloom on his face which laughter and compliments failed for a moment to dissipate — at last he said:
‘Ah, Mrs. Barton, Mrs. Barton! if I hadn’t this little retreat to take refuge in, to hide myself in, during some hours of the day, I should not be able to bear up — Brookfield has prolonged my life for—’
‘I cannot allow such sad thoughts as these,’ said Mrs. Barton laughing, and waving her white hands. ‘Who has been teasing notre cher Milord? What have dreadful Lady Jane and terrible Lady Sarah been doing to him?’
