Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

Whereupon she broke forth into a pleasant garrulousness, telling him that she had enjoyed watching the French country as it passed through a long stretch of fens, pools, meres, linking one into the other so closely that she never was sure that the train was not following the course of a marshy, sluggish river; on one of these pools was an abandoned boat. But why do you think the boat was abandoned, Etta? It is probably used daily. I hope it isn’t, she answered; it would be out of keeping with the landscape if it were. He asked if she had made a sketch of the boat, and learnt from her that lunch had helped the time away till the train passed into a landscape from which the sea never seemed to be far distant, sand-hills and pines; and travelling on and on they caught sight of the sea at intervals, losing it again and again, till at last it appeared before them, calm as a lake, speckled with ships. We embarked, Harold, and voyaged under a pale mauve sky till the white cliffs came into view. You have no idea how fine they are, despite the fact that they have been called the parapets of an island of blowing woodland. Although Etta knew that the slightest memory of his business would wipe from his mind the most beautiful description of sea and sky ever penned, she returned to the sunset to plague him, and when she had exhausted her vocabulary in description of the trains she described how she had, during the whole of the crossing, walked to and fro, getting into her lungs as much sea breeze as she could, which they wanted sadly.

  He will understand that, she said to herself, and was rewarded by some commendatory remarks from Harold as to her wisdom in remaining on deck, and of all, in returning home, remarks that provoked her out of her facetiousness, and becoming terribly serious she asked him if she was looking a fright. He answered that she was looking tired, and she replied that she was all right till she reached Dover. I’ve never been in a train that crawled into Chatham up a long incline like a beldam, she said. At Chatham we saw the sea again, which was a great discouragement, for I thought we had left the sea a hundred miles behind us. You know how in a dream we try to escape from something and can’t? It was like that, and about an hour ago I seemed to lose control of myself. Yes, you seemed very nervous when you jumped out of the train at Charing Cross. I don’t know how it was, but the Dover train got upon my nerves, she answered. The ten miles between London and Sutton are passing pleasantly enough now. And the Manor House, if I remember rightly, is near the station. How far is it, Harold? Now, Etta, I’m not going to tell you how far the Manor House is from the station. As if you had forgotten!

  Harold’s density, or rather his lack of humour, his slow, methodical mind, had always been an amusement to his mother and sister, who looked upon him as a very pure Marr in mind and in body; and recalling her mother’s words: — Never did a mind and body come together so harmoniously, Etta applied them to Harold, thinking with amusement, but not unkindly, that his mind was inevitable in a thin, well-proportioned man, who walked with his shoulders set well back, and caressed a long, golden moustache with a short, crabbed hand. She acknowledged his nose to be better shapen than her own; but what she lost on the nose, she gained on the eyes — his wore the same brown stare always, and she fell in with her mother’s judgment that whosoever saw Harold would recognise him to be the type of the South-Saxon, commonplace and steadfast. And then her thoughts passing from Harold to her mother, she remembered the pain that his mother’s failings used to cause Harold during the last years of her life; for there was no denying that her mother often drank more wine than was good for her, and when that happened her tongue was unrestrained — she talked with her butler during dinner about the cedars of Lebanon; and though Harold admired his mother’s contributions to the Saturday Review, he could not bring himself to accept them as sufficient atonement for her social transgressions. Indeed, he would have preferred that she ceased to contribute to the Saturday Review and other papers, and in unguarded moments he was wont to produce his opinion that the people of the Manor House should refrain from playing the piano in public, and from suburban acquaintances.

  Etta threw back to her mother in many little ways, for a true Marr would not have picked up acquaintances in the National Gallery — an Orme (Mrs. Marr was an Orme) might. Etta, too, recognised her kin in the Orme rather than in the Marr. The readiness with which she reproduced her musical memories on the piano came to her from her mother; likewise her taste for art. Mrs. Marr had brought back copies of Andrea del Sarto and Luini from Italy, and visitors were expected to accept them as originals and Etta’s water-colours as prodigies, which they were able to do without suffering in their consciences; artists didn’t come in those days to the Manor House. And Etta’s thought on returning home was of her mother, who, with all her faults, would have rendered homage to the drawings she was bringing, some comprehension, some interest at least. Harold would, of course, ask to see her drawings, and the thought of showing drawings to Harold, who was a real Marr, more Marr than ever, more like himself, awoke the spirit of comedy in Etta; and remembering that a man proclaims his inner entity in his choice of meats, she asked him what he had ordered for dinner.

  Well, Etta, I’m afraid that at this moment I can’t recall the whole of the bill of fare, but I’m sure there’s some salmon. That’s English enough, she answered slyly, detecting a better opening for her wit when Harold happened to mention jugged hare. Isn’t that rather a sudden leap? she enquired. Leap where? Into England’s most characteristic dish, she replied, her amusement suddenly checked by his answer that if jugged hare was not to her liking, the cook would be able to find something that was in the larder. It isn’t a question of my liking it, Harold, she interrupted, fearing that she had offended him, a thing she did not wish to do. A year of hard work has made me nervous, and I’m trying to forget myself in a joke, that is all, only you won’t let me. I am so tired and weary that whether there was jugged hare or boiled chicken or grilled salmon —

  Again you’re making fun of England, Etta. Oh no, Harold, I’m not. I am too tired to eat, that’s all. He asked if she would come down to dinner. No, Harold; let me have a cup of weak tea and a biscuit. You’ll forgive me for not sitting through the jugged hare with you, for I’m very, very tired, and you’ll not expect me at breakfast and will go away as usual by the nine o’clock train? His anxiety to catch the nine o’clock train to London was a family joke, and Harold was about to say that he was weary of the joke and that it was time a new one were invented; but the train was running into Sutton, and he said instead: The carriage will be waiting for us, and don’t ask me how far we are from the station. She welcomed this tardy appreciation of her joke, and a few minutes afterwards they passed through the lodge gates, and a footman came forth to take down Etta’s luggage. You are sure, Etta, that you will not take even a little soup before going to bed? No, Harold; I couldn’t eat anything, not even soup. And he watched her ascending step by step wearily, indulging in the hope that there was nothing radically wrong with her, and that she would be well again after a good night’s rest.

  It doesn’t seem to me as if I shall ever be able to think of eating again. I am too tired even to sleep, she sighed as she laid her head on the pillow; but the many restless hours she saw before her did not come to pass. I must have fallen asleep at once, she said, stretching herself voluptuously. The day is broad and bright, and how pleasant the room is. For how long have I slept? What time is it? Ten, eleven, or maybe twelve o’clock. Not so bad as that, she added, catching sight of the clock, only half-past ten. So she turned over and lay in a happy, lucid idleness among the pillows for another hour, thinking of her bathroom and the comfort of it, remembering that in the hotel in the Quartier Latin there was no bathroom, and that she and Cissy and Elsie had to go to some public baths, a thing that she disliked to do. Bathing, she had said, where all the bodies in the town have been, a remark that had provoked them to chide her. For fastidiousness, she said, and for coarseness on another occasion, when she had answered Elsie, who came into her room to borrow one of her dresses: With pleasure, Elsie, if you promise not to return it to me. I cannot abi
de anybody’s sweat but my own.

  Etta turned over and over, thinking how pleasant it was to go straight from one’s bedroom to one’s bath; and returning from her bath in a white wrapper, she stood before the glass saying: What a fright I am looking! I ought to be looking better after my long sleep. We are in for a hot day, she added, and began to consider what she should wear. One doesn’t know what to wear in such weather as this, she continued, as she settled the ribbons, in her white dress and looked once more into the glass to see if the soft, fluffy hair which the least breath disturbed, was disarranged. She smoothed it with her short, white hand. There was a wistful expression in her brown eyes, a little, pathetic, won’t-you-care-for-me expression which she cultivated, knowing its charm in her somewhat short, rather broad face, ending in a pointed chin. The nose was slightly tip-tilted; her teeth were white, but too large; she was short, somewhat stocky, yet she seemed almost stately as she passed with measured and demure steps along the passages and down the high staircase, stopping in the breakfast-room in front of a ham and a tongue with a gesture, though nobody was there to admire it. Eggs, bacon, kidneys, she said, lifting the covers of the dishes, and she crossed to another table, to be tempted by a melon. Only a water melon, but a good one, she said; and her thoughts went to the great Canteloupe melons of France, rough-skinned and wide-furrowed, just as if Nature had foreseen the silver knives slicing them into portions, red inside, filled with seeds. De quoi manger et boire, she muttered, airing her French gaily, for her thoughts were still in France. Now if Harold were to hear me criticising his melons, how angry he’d be!

  The coffee, however, in Sutton was plentiful and good, and having refreshed herself according to her appetite, she strolled to the windows and walked through them on to a flagged pathway, over which her father and mother had built a veranda on their return from one of their Italian journeys, forgetful that a veranda, as its name implies, is not English, and that a sloping roof, a portico, connected with a sturdily-built low house in grey stone, is an incongruous adjunct. The house would have been better without it, Etta reflected, though on a day like this, almost oriental, a veranda is something more than a piece of unnatural picturesqueness. We have been haying the same weather here for some time, Miss, said the butler, to whom Mrs. Marr used to address most of her conversation during dinner, and all the fields about are opening in great cracks. It’s just the same in France, Collar, Etta replied, and looking at a stretch of country shelving down towards a shallow valley, spreading gently into woods and fields, all dry as tinder, that a match would set fire to, she thought of the melancholy of summer-time, when the season is at pause and the sap no longer rises and the leaves are withering. They will be gone earlier this year than last, she said to herself, and her reverie ending, she began to think if she would walk across the parched fields to the point of view, her thoughts turning to the prospect which she knew so well, for long ago, when they were children, they went thither for picnics, and heard a tale of their grandfather, John Marr, the founder of the family, whose wont it was to sit there dreaming of the purchase he would make of acres if his whisky continued to sell well. He owned but a few hundred acres, and coveted the thousands that reached up to the horizon, confiding to his son, Richard, that when he had bought Chown’s farm on the horizon, he would be able to bring his friends to see the view, and to say: (For none will know that the piece lying in between does not belong to us), Our lands extend as far as the eye can see, to the horizon.

  II

  The rooms within the great stone walls of the Manor House at Sutton were large but somewhat low, the house being a low, three-storeyed house; and everywhere there were pictures, in the passages, in the drawing-rooms, in the dining-rooms, two generations having set themselves to form collections, and very disparate were the tastes of John and Richard Marr. John Marr, never having been to Italy, bought out of the Royal Academy, and in his share of the collection were pictures by Wilkie, Egg, Webster, and many brown glens by Linnell, his money not having come to him soon enough for the purchase of Turners.

  Our grandfather seems to have liked Westhall and Stoddart, Etta said. If one likes one, it’s only natural to like the other. And don’t you like either? Harold asked. In a way, but English painting seems more or less amateurish. England never seems able to learn to draw. What, interjected Harold, not Wilkie? The Dutchman did all that he did, and better. But he seems to have been able to grasp the construction of a head better than the others, better than Hilton. Our grandfather’s eyebrows, Etta added, after a pause, are very well done, and it is difficult to draw an eyebrow. Harold asked how this was, and a moment after they had forgotten the portrait they were looking at and were talking of the man himself, the founder of the family, whose instincts for business filled Harold with an admiration that he never was able wholly to conceal, even when talking to strangers, and Etta with a slight contempt, which she was never able wholly to conceal when Harold began to tell of his grandfather’s admirable foresight when he lent a friend some money to pay a debt of honour, the security being a large number of shares in a distillery. She had heard the story many times in fragments, and foreseeing that she would have to hear it all again, she permitted herself to impugn her grandfather’s conduct, asking Harold if it were true that, on being elected Chairman for his business instincts, he had allowed the trade of the distillery to die away till the shareholders were glad to get rid of their shares. The story ran that the shareholders had held on too long, and that their grandfather was afraid the reforms he had in mind would never enable him to recapture the trade he had let go.

  I cannot understand how it is, Etta, that you take pleasure in trying to pick holes in those upon whose industry and foresight you are living. I admire my grandfather as much as you do, Harold, only I admire him for different reasons. I was anxious this morning to go to the point of view. If grandfather had not died when he did, he would have bought those five thousand acres, and would have been made a Baronet, perhaps a Lord. Brewers and distillers have never been raised to the Peerage, Etta. Oh yes, they have, Etta answered. Not in the ‘forties, said Harold; don’t forget that grandfather died in ‘forty-five. We must give him credit for his good intentions, which father might have realised, and which you might realise, Harold, if you cared. But do you care so much, Etta? I thought that you only cared for painting.

  Their talk passed from their grandfather to their father, whom Sir Francis Grant had painted amid Italian mountain scenery, and Mrs. Marr in the midst of old masters, lost in admiration of a Guido Reni. On the walls were many copies, Andrea del Sarto being a favourite with both Mr and Mrs. Marr. One of Mrs. Marr’s obiter dicta was well known in Sutton and much admired; she had said: If you have not money to buy Raphaels and Michael Angelos, the next best thing is to buy copies. Mother seems to have liked Salvator Rosa, Etta continued, but I think it was his name that exalted his landscapes in her eyes. You remember, Harold, mother always used to roll it out: Salvator Rosa. She never missed putting a great deal of R into Rosa, did she, and even went to the trouble of playing some of his music, for he composed songs, which she sang, do you remember, at the concerts? Harold remembered his mother’s follies and also her failings, but he was sensitive on the subject and did not wish them alluded to. Malice was, however, instinctive in Etta, and accepting his dark face for a reproof, she said: I have as much right to admire father and mother as you have, Harold. We don’t admire them for the same things, that is all. Our father and mother had a house in Berkeley Square and received all London, and were received by all London. I have heard you say yourself that at the dinner father gave after winning the Lincolnshire Handicap there was only one untitled person in the room — Aunt Mary.

  The races that preceded and that followed the Lincolnshire Handicap nearly cost us our business. Father and mother could not understand that the source of our fortune was not inexhaustible, and went on spending. At the end of her life mother couldn’t see anything without wanting to buy it, and father never went
to the office. I think they were both ashamed of it, as I think you are, Etta. A business that we are ashamed of hits back very quickly — If father and mother had lived, Etta interjected — Let us not think of that, Harold replied, and Etta asked him if the business, since he took it in hand, was reviving. The question untied Harold’s tongue and he talked for a long time, wearying Etta with details, for what interested her was how much they would have to spend and how soon it would be before Harold could afford to give her a house in Park Lane. But I thought, Etta, that your idea was to live in the Quartier Latin with students. You have no ambition, Harold, Etta answered, to which he replied that every man has ambitions, projects, call them what you will, and that his thought was to realise his grandfather’s idea — the purchase of a great landed estate. And answering a look of perplexity which had come into her brother’s face, she said: When I am in Paris I think of nothing but painting, for painting is being done all round me. But if I had a house in Berkeley Square I should think of other things besides painting. One likes to know and to be known, and if one has not a title one has to do something, to write a book or paint a picture. But what I don’t understand are people with titles bothering themselves about books or pictures. Why aren’t they satisfied with their titles?

  I am glad to hear you speak like that, Etta, for I thought you were going to spend your life in Paris. Not my life; but I am going back, although I don’t feel sure that painting is as deep in me as I thought for. A look of doubt, amounting to sorrow, came into her face, and to cheer her Harold reminded her that a certain staleness comes often after a long year’s work. Yes, she answered, a year of eight hours a day is a long year. Yet you tell me that you think painting is not so deep in you as you believed it to be. Is it the weariness that comes after a year’s work, or did you hear anybody say so — Cissy, Elsie, or the Professor? I shouldn’t pay any attention to what Cissy and Elsie said; that would be jealousy. The Professor, I assure you, thought a great deal of my drawing. Lefebre went round the studio correcting one Tuesday morning, and before leaving he said: Miss Marr’s drawing is the best in the studio, and I do not except even Doucet’s. And Doucet was his private pupil, who worked in his studio. Of course I don’t think that at the end of the week my drawing was as good as Doucet’s; I cannot carry out a thing to the rounded end as well as he. But they mustn’t expect too much from me. I am only four-and-twenty, and at that age one isn’t an Ingres, not altogether, not even a Lefebre or a Bouguereau.