by George Moore
She opened her window, and sat there hoping that something would come out of the night and whisper in her ear the secret that tormented her. The stars knew! If she could only read them! She felt she was feeling a little more than she was capable of understanding. The ecstasy grew deeper, and she waited for the revelation. But none came, and feeling a little ashamed she got up to close the window, and it was then that the revelation broke in her mind. She had met the man who was to lead the Irish people! They wanted a new leader, a leader with a new idea; the new leader must come from the outside, and he had come to them from America, and her emotion was so great that she would have liked to have awakened her father. She would have liked to have gone into the country waking the people up in the cottages, telling them that the leader had come. She stood entranced, remembering all he had said to her. He had told her he had been moved to return to Ireland after the war in Cuba, and she had not understood. The word married passed through her mind before she could stay it. But she was necessary to this man, of this she was sure; the Voice had told her. She was feeling more than she could understand, and she lay down in her bed certain that she had accomplished the first stage of her journey.
And just then Ned was leaning on the garden gate. The summer night was sweet and still, and he wanted to think of this girl who had come so suddenly into his life. The idea of marriage flitted across his mind as it had flitted across hers, and he tried to remember the exact moment in Cuba when the wish to see Ireland had come into his mind. To believe in fate and predestination is an easy way out of life’s labyrinth, and if one does not believe in something of the kind the figures will not come right. How did he know that he had not met this girl for some unknown purpose. He could see a great white star through a vista in the trees, and he said: “I believe that that star knows. Why will it not tell me?”
And then he walked into the woods, and out under the moon, between the little grey fields. Some sheep had come out on the road and were lying upon it. “I suppose it’s all very natural,” he said. “The circus aspiring to the academy and the academy spying to the circus. Now, what am I going to do to-morrow? I suppose I must go to see her.”
He had visited all the ruins and pondered by all the cromlechs, and was a little weary of historic remains; the girl was too much in his mind to permit of his doing much writing. He might go to Dublin, where he had business, and in the morning he looked out the trains, but none seemed to suit his convenience, and at five o’clock he was at Laurel Hill listening to Ellen. She was anxious to talk to him about the political opportunity he could seize if he were so minded.
“Men have always believed in fate,” Ned said, and, interrupting him suddenly she asked him if he would come to see a pretty house in the neighbourhood — a house that would suit him perfectly, for he must have a house if he intended to go in for politics.
They came back in the dusk, talking of painting and papering and the laying out of the garden. Ellen was anxious that the garden should be nice, and he had been much interested in the old family furniture at Laurel Hill, not with the spindle-legged Sheraton sideboard, but with the big Victorian furniture which the Cronins thought ugly. He liked especially the black mahogany sideboard in the dining-room, and he was enthusiastic about the four-post bed that Mr. Cronin had slept in for thirty years without ever thinking it was a beautiful thing. This massive furniture represented a life that Ned perceived for the first time, a sedate monotonous life; and he could see these people accomplishing the same tasks from daylight to dark; he admired the well-defined circle of their interests and the calm security with which they spoke of the same things every evening, deepening the tradition of their country and of their own characters; and he conceived a sudden passion for tradition, and felt he would like to settle down in these grass lands in an eighteenth-century house, living always amid heavy mahogany furniture, sleeping every night in a mahogany four-post bed: and he could not help thinking that if he did not get the mahogany four-post bed with the carved top, perhaps he would not care to marry Ellen at all.
The next time he saw her their talk turned upon the house she had found for him, and she said if he did not take it he would certainly go back to America in the spring. She forgot herself a little; her father had to check her, and Ned returned home sure in his mind that she would marry him — if he asked her. And the next day he chose a pair of trousers that he thought becoming — they were cut wide in the leg and narrow over the instep. He looked out for a cravat that she had not seen him wear, and he chose the largest, and he put on his braided coat. He could not see that his moustache was not in keeping with his clothes: he had often intended to shave it, but to-day was not the day for shaving. She had liked his moustache, and he thought it would be a pity she should not enjoy it, however reprehensible her taste for it might be. And he pondered his side-whiskers, remembering they were in keeping with his costume (larger whiskers would be still more in keeping), and amused by his own fantastic notions, he thought he was beginning to look like the gentleman of seventy or eighty years ago that he had seen in varnished maplewood frames in the drawing-room at the Cronins’. His trousers were of a later period, but they were, nevertheless, contemporaneous with the period of the mahogany sideboard, and that was what he liked best.
Suddenly he stopped, remembering that he had never wished to be married, because he never thought that he could love the same woman always, and now he asked himself if Ellen were an exception, and if he had been led back to Ireland to marry her. He had grown tired of women before, but it seemed to him that he never could grow tired of her. That remained to be seen; the one certain thing was that he was going to propose to her.
He was told she was in the garden, and he was glad to dispense with the servant’s assistance; he would find his way there himself, and, after some searching, he found the wicket. The thing itself and its name pleased him. When he had a garden he would have a wicket. He had already begun to associate Ellen with her garden. She was never so much herself as when attending her flowers, and to please her he had affected an interest in them, but when he had said that the flowers were beautiful his eyes went to the garden walls and Ellen had seen that they had interested him more than the flowers. He had said that the buttresses were of no use; they had been built because in those days people took a pleasure in making life seem permanent. The buttresses had enabled him to admire the roses planted between them, and he had grown enthusiastic; but she had laughed at his enthusiasm, seeing quite clearly that he admired the flowers because they enhanced the beauty of the walls.
At the end of the garden there was a view of the Dublin mountains, and the long walk that divided the garden had been designed in order to draw attention to them. The contrast between the wild mountain and the homely primness of the garden appealed to his sense of the picturesque; and even now though the fate of his life was to be decided in a few minutes he could not but stay to admire the mysterious crests and hollows. In this faint day the mountains seemed more like living things, more mysterious and moving, than he had even seen them before, and he would have stood looking at them for a long while if he had not had to find Ellen. She was at the furthest end of the garden, where he had never been, beyond the rosary, beyond the grass-plot, and she was walking up and down. She seemed to have a fishing-net in her hand. But how could she be fishing in her garden? Ned did not know that there was a stream at the end of it; for the place had once belonged to monks, and they knew how to look after their bodily welfare and had turned the place into a trout preserve. But when Mr. Cronin had bought the property the garden was waste and the stream overgrown with willow-weed and meadow-sweet and every kind of brier. And it was Ellen who had discovered that the bottom of the stream was flagged and she had five feet of mud taken out of it, and now the stream was as bright and clear as in the time of the monks, and as full of trout. She had just caught two which lay on the grass panting, their speckled bellies heaving painfully.
“There is a great big trout here,” Ellen
said, “he must be a pound weight, and we tried to catch him all last season, but he is very cunning, he dives and gets under the net.”
“I think we shall be able to catch him,” said Ned, “if he is in the stream and if I could get another net.”
“The gardener will give you one.”
And presently Ned came back with a net, and they beat up the stream from different ends, Ellen taking the side next the wall. There was a path there nearly free from briers, and she held her light summer dress round her tightly. Ned thought he had never seen anyone so prettily dressed. She wore a striped muslin variegated with pink flowers; there were black bows in her hat and black ribbon was run down the bottom of her dress; she looked very pretty against the old wall touched here and there with ivy. And the grace of her movement enchanted Ned when she leaned forward and prevented the trout from escaping up the stream. But Ned’s side of the stream was overgrown with briers and he could not make his way through them. Once he very nearly slipped into the stream, and only saved himself by catching some prickly briers, and Ellen had to come over to take the thorns out of his hand. Then they resumed their fishing, hunting the trout up and down the stream. But the trout had been hunted so often that he knew how to escape the nets, and dived at the right moment. At last wearied out he let Ned drive him against the bank. Ellen feared he would jump out of the net at the last moment, but he was tired and they landed him safely.
And proud of having caught him they sat down beside him on the grass and Ellen said that the gardener and the gardener’s boy had tried to catch him many times; that whenever they had company to dinner her father said it was a pity they had not the big trout on the table.
The fishing had been great fun, principally on account of Ellen’s figure, which Ned admired greatly, and now he admired her profile, its gravity appealed to him, and her attitude full of meditation. He watched her touching the gasping trout with the point of her parasol. She had drawn one leg under her. Her eyes were small and grey and gem-like, and there was a sweet look of interrogation in them now and then.
“I like it, this lustreless day,” said Ned, “and those swallows pursuing their food up and down the lustreless sky. It all seems like a fairy-tale, this catching of the fish, you and I. The day so dim,” he said, “so quiet and low, and the garden is hushed. These things would be nothing to me were it not for you,” and he put his hand upon her knee.
She withdrew her knee quickly and a moment after got up, and Ned got up and followed her across the grass-plot, and through the rosary; not a word was said and she began to wonder he did not plead to be forgiven. She felt she should send him away, but she could not find words to tell him to go. His conduct was so unprecedented; no one had ever taken such a liberty before. It was shameful that she was not more angry, for she knew she was only trying to feel angry.
“But,” he said, suddenly, as if he divined her thoughts, “we’ve forgotten the fish; won’t you come back and help me to carry them? I cannot carry three trout by myself.”
She was about to answer severely, but as she stood looking at him her thoughts yielded before an extraordinary feeling of delight; she tried in vain to collect her scattered mind — she wished to reproach him.
“Are you going to answer me, Ellen?” and he took her hand.
“Ned, are you a Catholic?” she said, turning suddenly.
“I was born one, but I have thought little about religion. I have had other things to think about. What does it matter? Religion doesn’t help us to love one another.”
“I should like you better if you were a good Catholic.”
“I wonder how that is?” he said, and he admired the round hand and its pretty articulations, and she closed her hand on his with a delicious movement.
“I could like you better, Ned, if you were a Catholic.... I think I could.”
“What has my being a good Catholic got to do with your love of me?”
And he watched the small and somewhat severe profile looking across the old grey wall into the flat grey sky.
“I did not say I loved you,” she said, almost angrily; “but if I did love you,” she said, looking at him tenderly, “and you were religious, I should be loving something eternal. You don’t understand what I mean? What I am saying to you must seem like nonsense.”
“No, it doesn’t, Ellen, only I am content with the reality. I can love you without wings.”
He watched for the look of annoyance in her face that he knew his words would provoke, but her face was turned away.
“I like you, but I am afraid of you. It is a very strange feeling. You ran away with a circus and you let the lion die and you went to fight in Cuba. You have loved other women, and I have never loved anyone. I never cared for a man until I saw you, until I looked up from the album.”
“I understand very well, Ellen; I knew something was going to happen to me in Ireland.”
She turned; he was glad to see her full face again. Her eyes were fixed upon him, but she saw through him, and jealous of her thought he drew her towards him.
“Let us go into the arbour,” he said. “I have never been into the arbour of clipped limes with you.”
“Why do you want to go into the arbour?”
“I want to kiss you.... The gardener can see us now; a moment ago he was behind the Jerusalem artichokes.”
“I hadn’t noticed the gardener; I hadn’t thought about him.”
She had persuaded herself before she went into the arbour, and coming out of the arbour she said: —
“I don’t think father will raise any objection.”
“But you will speak to him. Hello! we’re forgetting the fish, and it was the fish that brought all this about. Was it to bring this about that they lived or are to be eaten to-night at dinner?”
“Ned, you take a strange pleasure in making life seem wicked.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so unsuccessful, but will you ask you father to invite me, Ellen? and I’ll try and make life seem nice — and the trout will try too.”
Ellen did not know whether she liked or disliked Ned’s levity, but when she looked at him an overpowering emotion clouded her comprehension and she walked in silence, thinking of when he would kiss her again. At the end of the walk she stopped to bind up a carnation that had fallen from its stake.
“Father will be wondering what has become of us.”
“I think,” said Ned, and his own cowardice amused him, “I think you had better tell your father yourself. You will tell him much better than I.”
“And what will you do?” she said, turning suddenly and looking at him with fervid eyes. “Will you wait here for me?”
“No, I will go home, and do you come and fetch me — and don’t forget to tell him I caught the trout and have earned an invitation to dinner.”
His irresponsibility enchanted her in spite of herself — Ned had judged the situation rightly when he said: “It is the circus aspiring to the academy and the academy spying the circus.” His epigram occurred to him as he walked home and it amused him, and he thought of how unexpected their lives would be, and he hummed beautiful music as he went along the roads, Schumann’s Lotus Flower and The Moonlight. Then he recalled the beautiful duet, Siegmund’s and Sieglinde’s May Time, and turning from sublimity suddenly into triviality he chanted the somewhat common but expressive duet in Mireille, and the superficiality of its emotion pleased him at the moment and he hummed it until he arrived at the farm-house.
Mrs. Grattan could tell his coming from afar, for no one in the country whistled so beautifully as Mr. Carmady, she said, “every note is clear and distinct; and it does not matter how many there are in the tune he will not let one escape him and there is always a pleasant look in his face when you open the door to him;” and she ran to the door.
“Mrs. Grattan, won’t you get me a cup of tea?” And then he felt he must talk to some one. “You needn’t bring it upstairs, I will take it in the kitchen if you’ll let me.”
Mrs. Grattan had a beautiful kitchen. It had an old dresser with a carved top and a grandfather’s clock, and Ned liked to sit on the table and watch the stove. She poured him out a cup of tea and he drank it, swinging his legs all the time.
“Well, Mrs. Grattan, I’ll tell you some news — I think I am going to marry Miss Cronin.”
“Well,” said she, “it doesn’t astonish me,” but she nearly let the teapot drop. “From the first day you came here I always thought something was going to happen to you.”
He had no sooner told her the news than he began to regret he had told her, and he said that Miss Cronin had gone to her father to ask his consent. Of course, if he did not give it, there would be no marriage.
“But he will give it. Miss Ellen does exactly as she likes with him, and it’s a fine fortune you will be having with her.”
“It isn’t of that I am thinking,” said Ned, “but of her red hair.”
“And you wouldn’t believe me when I said that she was the prettiest girl in the country. Now you will see for yourself.”
Ned hadn’t finished his tea when there was a knock at the door.
“And how do you do, Miss Ellen?” said Mrs. Grattan, and Ellen guessed from her manner that Ned had told her.
“Well, Mrs. Grattan, I am glad that you are the first person to bear the news to. I have just asked my father’s consent and he has given it. I am going to marry Mr. Carmady.”
