Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  But she has drawn a chair forward and is going to step from the chair on to the table, I said, and when on the table she will attach the rope — to what? I asked myself, and tried to remember if there was a pole above the window to which she could attach it. But I could no longer think clearly. My thoughts slipped away as thoughts do in a dream, and just as the dreamer says: I’m dreaming, I too began to think I was dreaming. It must be only a dream, I said, and a little time went by. She is writing a letter, I said, giving the reason for her suicide, and I became strangely curious, asking myself what reasons she would assign, and if she would find the right words. I must have lost consciousness, if not for long, for some moments, for I remember a table being kicked aside. She has hanged herself, I said, and if I do not strive to shake off this lethargy, and run to her and cut her down, she will die and I shall be responsible. I cannot tell how complete or how partial my possession of myself was at the time. There are moments in every man’s life in which he is not himself, in which he loses possession of his free will, if there be such a thing as free will. Be this as it may, I could not move from my chair. I must hasten, I said, lest I be too late, but I could not move, and then the song began to sing in my ears: her death will loosen her clutch upon my life, and in spite of my efforts to rouse myself the time went by. I do not know how it went, and when I awoke, for I felt that I must have lost consciousness, I said: she is dead, it is all over, and dipping the pen into the ink, I addressed the envelope and walked to the office of the newspaper and handed in my copy.

  I said just now there was an interval between the tying of the rope and the moment when she kicked the table aside, and that interval was occupied in writing a letter. That is so. She wrote a letter before hanging herself, explaining her suicide. The porter came upstairs, and the police came, and she was carried away, and buried, and disappeared from every human mind except mine. But in my mind she persists, becoming every day clearer, more distinct, and more authoritative. I feel her behind me in the streets; I wake up in the night and see her in the darkness; and last night she bade me go to you: thou must go to Ivan Sergeivitch, she said, and tell him all; and I believe she sent me to you, that I might get peace from her memory. But it would seem that the dead do not know all, for you have listened, not as she thought you would listen, but as I knew you would listen, without pity, almost with contempt. You are incapable, Ivan Sergeivitch, of a noble action, or of a noble thought except when you are interpreting the souls that your imagination reveals to you. You’re not a Russian but a Greek — a Greek from the Crimea; and all the while I have been telling you my story you have been judging me.... True that I came for judgment, but the sympathy of a Russian Mujik would have served me better; you have submitted me to the test of reason, saying: repentance is a word without meaning to the philosopher, and confession disgraceful and unworthy of man. Why did I come here? Did I not foresee all this? Vera sent me, and I did not dare to disobey her. She said that I must unburden my conscience to you else I should have no peace. Why did she send me? She sent me to you, Ivan Sergeivitch, that I might learn from you that there is a worse criminal than I. You, sitting in your palace of art, waiting for me to leave you, saying: how much longer will he keep me from my manuscript, a manuscript in which, no doubt, a nightingale in a wood hard by is singing her honied song while a heart yearns in a shadowy saloon, like this one. Rich furniture, vases, pictures. Very sordid and disgraceful my life must seem to you. But I would not exchange mine for yours.

  Cold-hearted sentimentalist, were Dostoieffsky’s last words, and upon them he dashed into the ante-room, and Tourguéneff heard the clink of the latch of the door that opened onto the staircase. And did Tourguéneff sit there letting the other fellow barge him for an hour without a word in his chops? The Murrigan should have been at him, leathering him all the way down the staircase to the very bottom and into the street. And what did Tourguéneff do then? I answered: he just dipped his pen in the ink and continued revising his manuscript. Are you sure you’ve got the story right, your honour? And seeing that Alec was beginning to lean towards Dostoieffsky’s view of Tourguéneff, I said: a man is not necessarily cold-hearted because he knows he cannot allay another’s remorse. Remorse, Alec, must burn itself out.

  CHAPTER 55.

  ALEC HAD GONE away to his tea, and I sat thinking of the talk we had had together, for it seems strange that a man who could understand a story could not appreciate Tourguéneff’s point of view that passion and violence should be avoided as not being sufficiently representative of life, and as this was Tourguéneff’s practice in his art it would be vain to expect him to treat life differently. But such a comprehension of life is reached only by the philosopher, and Alec is without philosophy. The Celt ever was and ever will be, mayhap, evolution having ceased, at least among men; and immersed in the thought of my country’s failure, I sat gazing at the sun resting on the hillside, and bethought myself of the quiet change that would come when the light had gone — a change within and without, I said, for the hawthorns in the park will lose their shadows, and my thoughts will become gentler, pulling on spiritual wings. I shall live for a little while detached from earthly life, as we shall live when this life is done with. Never, I continued, have I been so near as I am at this moment to what Christians call belief. If we live it will be in a twilight valley with a glow above the hills. A glow of what? I asked myself, and it was seemingly a voice from within that answered me: a glow of happy aspiration.

  And it was in this mood that I walked towards my friend’s house to meet him on the greensward, with simple, homely talk, for it is pleasant to enter into simple talk with a friend after moments of enthusiasm or ecstasy, pleasant it is to hear him say: the weather seems settled at last, and to see his goodwife coming from the garden laden with fruit and flowers, to hear the wheels of the pony-chaise, and to meet the young girls returning from their different adventures, a tennis-party or a picnic on one of the islands in the Bay. Which? To watch the young rooks, not yet fully fledged, flopping among the high branches, waiting to receive food from their parents, and, having received it, to see them return to the nests for the night, in response to the impatient cawing of their parents.

  It is always, I said, out of meditations of what always was, and is and ever shall be that the best and most moving stories come, and my thoughts going back to the story that I told Alec, I said to myself: Tourguéneff was right to withhold words; his silence was better than absolution, for Dostoieffsky will seek to interpret his silence, and will be led towards peace as day is led towards night. Where have you left your new friend? my host asked, startling me out of my meditation. He is having his tea, I answered, and repeated the phrase, delighted by its homeliness. He is having his tea. Could a man be about any more useful business? He is having his tea, and no doubt devoutly, I said to myself, and my host asked me if I was going to see Alec to-morrow. He has been a delightful adventure, I replied, somewhat sententiously, but the adventure has come to an end, and it doesn’t seem to me that anything will be gained by continuing it.

  Another story from him or myself I could not bear, and to escape from Alec for the next few days I remained indoors till the news came up from the town that he had left Westport, and was not expected back for a week. He is sometimes away for weeks at a time, my host said. I shall not await his return, I remarked — a remark that prompted my host to ask me if I were going to Moore Hall.

  And after putting the question he stood by the fireplace pulling at a cigar, still uncertain that it was fully lighted. At last a huge puff of smoke cleared his doubts away, and he turned out of the billiard-room, thinking, perhaps, that I should be left to my memories of the great square Georgian house, one of those built at the end of the eighteenth century in Ireland, atop of a high flight of stairs, atop of a pleasant green hill with woods stretching right and left down to the shore of a lake flowing round headlands, past islands, and finding a passage between the great oak wood of Derinrush and the Partry shore, widening o
ut in front of the great feudal fortresses of Castle Carra and Castle Burke into what is almost another lake, passing round Church Island, and ending in a great snipe marsh under the walls of the old Abbey of Ballintubber, built by Roderick, King of Connaught, shall we say in the thirteenth century; a crescent-shapen lake with Moore Hall at one end of the crescent and Ballintubber at the other — a lake on whose every shore is a ruin, an ancient castle, a burnt or an abandoned house. Even the lake’s islands were once strongholds, and we dream of these defended fiercely against boat-loads of pursuers till portcullis and drawbridge came to be forbidden in Ireland, and later-day chieftains deserted the strongholds of their ancestors for manor houses, retaining their vassals under the name of tenantry, the village supplying the big house with hewers of wood, drawers of water, ploughmen, reapers, gardeners, gamekeepers, huntsmen, jockeys, maidservants, menservants, even mistresses.

  As late as the sixties the Georgian house killed its own mutton and beef, baked its own bread, brewed its own beer, and the last brewer at Moore Hall was John Malowney; his wife, Mary Macdonald that was, and her sister, Betty Macdonald, were cook and housemaid. These Macdonalds were probably the descendants of former chieftains, and the original owners of some of of the lands my great-grandfather purchasd when he returned from Spain. Whilom chieftains descend into the service of landlords, and the new landlords fought duels, there being no castles to besiege! The Irish castle flourished if the cattle-raiders returned with numerous beeves, and the Georgian house if the blood stock were speedy; it showed signs of declension as soon as the “crack” began to lift his leg when the back sinew was pressed after the morning gallop.

  My father, who came of the Protestant ascendancy (a fact that must be borne in mind always — Irish Catholics being worthless) rose at half-past six to see the horses gallop, though nothing else could persuade him out of his bed before ten. He was a good judge of a horse, given overmuch, it is true, to partial and unsatisfactory trials, but able to bring a horse fit and well to the post. Wolf Dog won a great many Queen’s plates, Coranna, the Caezarewitch, just failing to get his head first past the post in the Caezarewitch. He cantered “home” in the Chester Cup, and this win kept Moore Hall out of the encumbered Estate Courts. Croagh Patrick won the two cups at Goodwood, and Master George all his races till the suspensory ligaments began to swell. I remember the day my father came up from the stables, with the evil news on his face, and his valet, who was fussing about the hall chairs with one of my father’s silk hats in his hands (in those days men did not go to the stables except in silk hat and gloves) confided to me in the pantry afterwards that he was afraid Master George’s forelegs must have shown some slight puffiness. We shall have the veterinary surgeon down here with his irons. Don’t you believe in firing? Joseph did not answer. Back sinews and suspensory ligaments are treated differently in these days; how, I have no knowledge, but in the sixties firing was a great device, and Master George’s forelegs were fired; and I believe it was the memory of this brutal remedy that made it so difficult to remain on his back when he was put into training again. Be this as it may, he had me off three times one morning. Slieve Carn was the last of the Moore Hall horses that showed “form,” but he was too beautiful for a race-horse, “only a Harab,” as the bookies used to say at Newmarket. His box still is there, and it was a sudden sight of this loose-box that incited me to cry after Tom Ruttledge: no, Tom, I’m not going to Moore Hall. You’d better make sure that you don’t want to go, he replied.... I’m going down to the office, perhaps you’ll tell me when I return.

  It seemed unkind to refuse to spend a few days at Moore Hall, but it was impossible to commit myself definitely to the visit. If a visit there was to be it should come about naturally, and I told my host that I should try to come to a decision whether I should visit the house of my birth or go straight to Dublin in the train: I shall be able to come to a decision, I said, between Westport and Castlebar; not before. There’s an excellent inn at Castlebar, and I can get all the food I shall require for a three days’ visit. You will save yourself a great deal of trouble, my host replied, if you decide now what your journey is to be. I’ll order a hamper to be packed for you. No, no, I replied; and invented on the spot some specious reasons for wishing to go to Castlebar by train. I should like to see the railway bridge again, I said, and half-an-hour after the tall arches that spanned the valley called forth my admiration once more, and I fell to thinking that if both ends of the bridge disappeared into the woods the bridge would be the most romantic in the dis-United Kingdom.

  The eastern side of the valley should be planted, and while considering who should undertake this reforestation, the pretty shapes of the Westport hills came into view, beguiling my thoughts so completely with their pretty outlines that at Castlebar my mind was not yet made up whether I should proceed on my journey or drive to Moore Hall. The road from Castlebar is not a cheerful one; a certain long stretch of bog rose up in memory, and I began to think that it would suit me better to alight at the next station, at Balia. But the train did not stop at Balia and at Claremorris the stationmaster told me that I should not be able to get a car on account of the races.

  How very unfortunate, I answered; I should have liked to have seen Moore Hall. I should have gone over in Mr Ruttledge’s motor. That would have been better than a car, the station-master replied, and the guard blew his whistle.