Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  The painters separated, each to his or her special subject, and when they returned weary from the forest with their canvases the first thing they saw was the barouche with its horses, coachman, and footman, in front of the hotel. Waiting for Madame la Pompadour! said Cissy. Madame Recamier returning from driving with Chateaubriand, answered Elsie, and they fell into the perennial discussion whether Madame Reeamier had lived and died in strict singleness. After hearing all the evidence and Morton’s conjectures, Elsie said: We shall only just have time to make ourselves tidy for dinner; and the girls went upstairs wondering what richly coloured gown Etta would wear so that she might fool the parson to the top of her bent. The strangely assorted twain dined at a corner table, Etta’s gown and the parson’s coat and collar distracting everybody’s attention from his and her neighbour. It was always thus when they dined at Lunions, and on this day dinner was half over when a servant brought in a letter and stood whispering at the door, Morton and Cissy and Elsie guessing that the letter contained evil news for Etta. So they said afterwards in the garden when they talked together, telling each other how Etta’s face had brightened at the sight of the handwriting and how quickly a change had appeared in her, the first lines of the letter affecting her so much that the parson jumped to his feet to help her, thinking that she was about to faint. She would have fainted, said Elsie, if it hadn’t been for the glass of water that he forced her to drink. And did you see her face afterwards, Morton, as she strove to gain control over herself? Yes, indeed I did, Cissy; and what powers of will she must have to have carried on as she did. She sent the parson to the piano with orders to do more than his usual splashing.

  She must have suffered-agony, said Elsie; but determined to deceive us, to prove to us that nothing had happened worth speaking about, she got up to dance, and waltzed about the floor with herself. It was out of politeness I asked her to dance with me, but she refused, you remember. Morton’s face drooped into meditation, and Elsie answered: If she had danced with you, the parson might have stopped playing. Cissy continued the conversation, telling how soon after Etta had called the Reverend Barrett over to her, saying that she felt tired and would like to return to Fontainebleau. She showed pluck, said Morton, for while the horses were being put to she stood talking to us and bade us good-night in quite a cheerful mood, or seemingly. Now what news can she have received? The news she received, answered Elsie, did not come from London. Harold is not dead, though the Comte may be.

  The Comte! Yes, it may be that. Or it may be the Comtesse. She spoke of Marie as her great friend, saying that she did not wish anything to happen to Marie, but if —

  Oh yes, I know, interjected Elsie, clearing the decks! clearing the decks!

  XV

  It was in the afternoon next day, as Morton was setting out for Melun to fetch his mistress and model, that a letter came from the hotel-keeper at Fontainebleau, saying that Miss Marr had left word that she was not to be called in the morning, and it was not till midday that a housemaid entered the room and gave the alarm. The doctor was sent for, and after an examination of the body, he reported that Miss Marr had died probably from heart failure. Morton handed the letter to Elsie and Cissy, who were returning from their painting. Good heavens! cried Elsie, and at Morton’s bidding she and Cissy jumped into the carriage, whilst Morton followed, saying: It was the letter that she got last night. And all the way to Fontainebleau they asked each other questions: What did she do it for? But did she do it? Was it an accident? Or was it an overdose? We shall never know, Morton said as they drove into the long, straggling street of Fontainebleau, for she has destroyed the letter, no doubt. But did she show the letter to Mr. Barrett? Elsie asked. Morton shrugged his shoulders, and the carriage stopped before the Hotel de France.

  The hotel-keeper told them that he had sent round to Mr. Barrett’s hotel, but Mr. Barrett had taken the eight o’clock to Paris. He mentioned that visitors did not like to sleep in a house in which there was a dead body, certainly not on the same floor. He had refrained, however, from calling in the police, who would have taken the body to the morgue, for he had known Miss Marr for some time, and she was a friend of the Comte de Malmédy. Morton told the man that he need not fear any loss for not having sent for the police and that a reasonable compensation would be paid by Mr. Harold Marr, who will be here to-morrow morning, he said. As I have his address I will write the telegram at once. May we go upstairs, said Cissy, to bid good-bye to our friend? We haven’t brought any flowers, added Elsie, there was no time; but we’ll send some. The hotelkeeper answered that a chambermaid would show them to the room.

  Timorous, abashed, they crossed the threshold. Like a piece of marble, said Cissy. And how unlike herself, answered Elsie, and the girls began to wonder if death reveals or hides the truth, or if truth and falsehood end with life. It seems only natural that the untruthful in life should be untruthful in death, said Cissy. Elsie did not answer, the moment not seeming to her one for criticism of their dead friend. All the same, it was dreadful to die like this, and laying aside their thoughts of the end that might await them, their eyes went round the room in search of the Watteau dress that she had danced in last night, and not finding it, Cissy said: She has hung up her dress in the wardrobe.

  She has put away everything. Her parasol is in the corner and her hat is in its box.

  She evidently thought it all out.

  Not a drawer is open; yet she must have opened many, seeking the drug.

  You think it was a drug? Cissy whispered, and returning from the bed, she said: It was a drug, for there’s no blood. She put on a fresh nightgown; how like her!

  Ah, here is the veronal, said Elsie, and the bottle half empty. If it was full last night, she has taken enough to kill twenty.

  And here is the letter she received at Lunions last night, on the toilet table, in full view. Ought we to read it?

  If she hadn’t wanted us to read it, she would have destroyed it, answered Elsie, and they read the letter together, lifting their eyes from time to time to make sure that the dead girl was not watching them. If she shouldn’t be dead, Cissy whispered, and should open her eyes and see us reading her letter! She will never open her eyes again, answered Elsie, and looking over Elsie’s shoulder Cissy continued reading the letter that the Comte had written to Etta in answer to a letter of condolence she had written to him, full of pathetic sentiments about his dead wife, ending up by reminding him he had promised her that if ever he was free he would marry her. It was stupid of her, said Cissy, to write such a letter at such a moment. But he needn’t have answered her so roughly.

  His letter killed her. All her hopes were set on this grand marriage, all her vanity. The mystery is explained, Morton.

  Morton closed the door. What mystery? he asked. She left the letter she got last night on the toilet table.

  And you have read it?

  If she hadn’t wanted us to read it, she wouldn’t have left it on the toilet table.

  That’s true, said Morton, and Elsie handed him the letter. Read it, she said.

  No, I couldn’t read it in front of her. It was the cause of her death, I presume?

  Elsie told him the contents of the letter, referring to it from time to time, reading out the words with which the Comte bade Etta good-bye. You see, Elsie said, there was no hope of her ever getting him back after this letter. He couldn’t return to her, and her mind was made up. She has put away her gown, her hat, stockings and shoes.

  She was always deliberate in everything she said and did, so it’s only natural that she should have been deliberate in death. But did she shoot herself, or was it poison?

  Veronal, Cissy answered, for there’s no wound. We looked.

  But why did she leave the letter? asked Morton.

  To revenge herself on the Comte, said Elsie. I can think of nothing else. There may have been some vindictiveness, but she lived in vanity, and she died in it seemingly.

  Even so, said Morion, it would be just as well not to t
hink of these things any more now that she’s dead. And what can we know of her motives? hardly anything... very little about our own. But it’s awful to stand here discussing her. Elsie and Cissy followed him out of the death-chamber, and on their way downstairs they were talking of the parson, how he would take the news when he returned from Paris. He’ll return this evening, Elsie said, and in two or three hours he will know all that we know. He’ll throw himself at the foot of her bed and weep, Morton replied, and when Cissy asked him how he knew, he answered that he could only think of Barrett watching all night in the death-chamber, weeping and praying alternately. Maybe she sent him to Paris to get him out of the way. Harold will find him, Elsie interjected. Harold will reach the Gare du Nord before six, Morton continued; it will take him an hour to drive from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyons, perhaps more than that, and there may not be a train, or a very slow one. I doubt if he will reach Fontainebleau before ten at the very earliest.

  SARAH GWYNN

  I

  ON RETURNING FROM the study door, whither he had accompanied the last patient, the doctor cast a glance of approbation at the two piles of gold and silver on his table, the gold slightly overtopping the silver; and considering them as a very adequate remuneration for his afternoon’s work, Dr. O’Reardon dropped into his great Chippendale armchair (the very one that Sir Stanley used to sit in — it had returned to Ely Place after a brief sojourn in Taylor’s shop in Liffey Street), and ensconced amid its carvings, his thoughts ran on a tiresome woman for whose everlasting megrim he had written a prescription: five grains of carbonate of soda, a neighbour, an acquaintance, a garrulous woman, who never would take a hint but would go on talking, however many people were in the waiting-room; she paid her guinea, but rarely failed to waste two guineas’ worth of his time, putting him past his complacency. He regretted these accesses of temper by the burnished brass of the fire-irons and the multi-coloured marble chimney-piece, and continued to recall his patients. Another woman engaged his thoughts; her rheumatoid arthritis perplexed him; she didn’t seem to improve under his treatment and he was afraid he would have to try inoculations. These cases, he said, go commonly from bad to worse. A moment after he was thinking of a child he had examined that morning for heart, still uncertain whether the murmur that had come to his ear through the stethoscope meant specific disease or whether it might be attributed to poverty of blood. Another, a still more serious case, was remembered; and so that he might think better he closed his eyes, but began very soon to lose control over his thoughts, a veil seeming to rise and another to descend. He strove against sleep, but it was too late to rouse, and he must have slept for a long or a short time, which he could not say, but he must have slept deeply, for when the knocker of the front door awoke him he stared round the room, not recognising it as his own, returning to consciousness of himself through recollections of the parlourmaid who had run out of the house that morning without saying a word to anybody (she had her wages yesterday). From the parlourmaid his thoughts turned to the cook, who must be upstairs, else she would have gone to the front door. Now who could the visitor be? A patient, most likely, though it was past four o’clock. For a doctor of his position to let a patient in was a breach of etiquette, but circumstance — Another knock startled him from his meditation, and he returned from the front door followed by a sparely dressed woman, standing not much higher than his elbow.

  All men and women resemble some animal, a friend had said one evening, and when he had pointed out many likenesses to cats and dogs, horses and hyenas, among his acquaintances, somebody said: And O’Reardon — what is he like? The answer came at once: A camel, and immediately everybody saw the resemblance: the small head, high nose, long lip, wide, drooping mouth. The story was an old one, almost out of currency, but the little starveling the doctor had just let into his house recalled it. If I am like a camel, he said to himself, what is this woman like? A squirrel? No; a squirrel is a gay boy. Before he could think again the little woman by his side began to tell that she had heard from Miss Lynch that he required a cook, and he listened, already won by a voice so pure and clear that his curiosity was stirred to see his visitor; and the little, blonde face, the upturned nose, and clear, eager eyes that appeared when the lamp was lighted seemed to be the girl he might have guessed if he had laid his mind to guessing — a tiny, thread-paper girl in a straw hat, an alpaca jacket, and a thin skirt that did not hide her broken boots, a starveling, and remembering what Miss Lynch had told him, he said: The cook must be in the house somewhere; she’ll get you a cup of tea.

  No, thank you, sir. I same here thinking you wanted a cook. The doctor answered that it was the parlourmaid who had left. Then you’ll not be wanting a cook, sir? she broke in, without a trace of disappointment in her voice; she even seemed to the doctor relieved to hear that she was not required. I remember now, the doctor said. You were in a convent in Wales, weren’t you?

  Yes, sir.

  Miss Lynch told me about you; but when you knocked I was asleep and must have slept heavily, for I didn’t know my own room when I awoke.

  I am sorry I woke you, sir.

  There’s no need for you to be sorry. I’m glad you did, and that I went to the door. You were in a convent for nearly ten years, and because you answered the SubPrioress, or maybe the Prioress herself, sharply, they bundled you out, clapping a straw hat on your head and an alpaca jacket on your shoulders, giving you but your bare fare to Dublin, not caring —

  Oh, but you mustn’t talk like that, sir! It was all my fault. I spoke to our Sub-Prioress in a way that I shouldn’t have. I lost my temper, and all the blame is with me. They did quite right to send me away, for they couldn’t have kept me. You must believe what I say; indeed, I am speaking the truth, and no more than it. The doctor did not answer, and at the end of the pause the nun said I doubt very much if I should suit you. I think I’ll go.

  You shall go, if you wish to go, in a minute or two, but I’d like to say a few words first. Miss Lynch mentioned that you would not hear a word said against the nuns, and advised me not to speak about the convent; but, as I have said, your knock awoke me, and I came to the door unable to collect my thoughts. That’s how it happened, else I should not have spoken about the nuns. So, you see, there’s no real reason for you to run away.

  You want a cook, sir? The doctor answered that his cook had decided to stay, but the parlourmaid had left, and that if she would care to accept the situation he would be glad to engage her. I go out in the mornings, he continued, to my hospital or to visit my patients, and in the afternoons I receive patients from two till four. The wages are twenty-four pounds a year. I don’t know your name.

  My name is Sarah Gwynn, sir; and during the pause Dr. O’Reardon was again attracted by the tiny face, lit by blue-grey nervous eyes. I hope you’ll not refuse the situation, he said, for if you do Miss Lynch will be very angry with me for my indiscretion.

  I should not like you to have it on your mind, sir, that the nuns behaved otherwise than rightly, and would sooner lose the situation than —

  Miss Lynch, who is a Roman Catholic, doesn’t take that view, but we need not trouble ourselves about the rights and wrongs. You may have been overworked and tired; your nerves may have given way.

  Yes, sir, that was it.

  Sarah’s vehement defence of her former friends and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ had evoked the doctor’s sympathy, and smitten by her originality, he determined not to lose her. You will require some clothes, he said, assuming that she had agreed to stay, and he went to his writing-table and took five pounds from the pile of gold. At the sight of so much money Sarah drew back, as if afraid. I should like you to buy the things you want before the shops close, he continued. Miss Lynch will advise you, perhaps accompany you, as you have only just arrived in Dublin.