Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  A blackbird was whistling in the apple boughs the evening they had come up from Mayo to live with Aunt Clara at number four, Smith’s Buildings — two little children of ten, dressed in black, for their father was dead. But neither of them understood the meaning of death at that time, and Priscilla had cried out and she had cried out to their aunt to be allowed to go into the lovely garden. It wasn’t a lovely garden at all then, but a wilderness, though there were many hawthorns overtopping the railings, a great ash by the gate, and a little alley of lilac bushes; and tired though they were from the long railway journey, they would have liked to run round the garden, to play perhaps a game of hide-and-seek among the lilac bushes. So it was with much sorrow that they heard their aunt tell that nobody in Smith’s Buildings cared to go into the garden; it was taboo because everybody living in the five houses could go into it, a reason that their minds could not apprehend, for they did not know then that a benefit extended to all appeals to none in particular. And they had gone to bed asking themselves why nobody went into the garden just because the people from the other houses might go into it. And next day and the next they cast longing eyes upon the rood of ground, filled with apple-trees and lilacs and hawthorns, and begged so hard to go and play in it that Aunt Clara had perforce to think of what arrangement might be come to with the agent for the property. Her nieces were little heiresses, each owning a property in the west of Ireland that produced about three hundred a year. Out of this six hundred a year we can easily afford to pay a gardener, Aunt Clara said, and the agent was invited to call, the proposal made to him being that Miss Lofft should have the exclusive possession of the garden on condition that she paid for its upkeep, a thing that the other tenants had refused to do. Why, they asked, should they pay for the upkeep of a garden that they never entered and did not wish to enter? But if I pay for the upkeep, and make a fine border of London Pride, and fill the beds with snapdragons, Canterbury bells, honesty, columbines, Madonna lilies, pansies, and put hollyhocks along the wall, all the other tenants will benefit by the scent and colour of the garden, Aunt Clara had said, an argument that the agent accepted, asking, however, for some rent; four pounds a year was the price of their playground, that was all, and they had enjoyed this rood of ground all their lives, since they were ten to the present day.

  She dropped her head into the cushion and lay shaken with grief till she could weep no more, and when she raised her face, swollen with tears, the blackbird, that had been silent for long, broke into another rich lay, calling her thoughts again to the distant but clear past of her childhood, and the fine days under the apple-tree with her sister, dressing dolls or learning the lessons that they took to the convent school at the corner of the Green. Priscilla was a little slow at her lessons, and though she looked so demure in that picture, almost dull, that was the fault of the artist; for she was not demure, at least she was not dull, and in the middle of learning French verbs would pick up her hoop and trundle it round the garden with so much joy that Emily had to pick up her hoop and trundle it after her, though she would have liked to master her lessons first. But Priscilla always had her way with her, and her thoughts dropped into consideration of her love for her sister; an almost mystical attachment it had often seemed to her, going back to the time when they had lain in the womb together. Priscilla had never seemed another being to her, but her second self, her shadow, her ghost, each akin to the other as the sound and its echo. In appearance they were the same, and she remembered how the Reverend Mother had once said: You are as alike as two casts come out of the same mould. She had said something more than that to the nun standing by, but Emily had only heard half the sentence, something about the master-hand having been over one, whereas — the rest of the sentence she did not catch, but guessed it to be a disparagement of Priscilla, whom the convent did not appreciate, for Priscilla did not seem to them to be shaping into a prize pupil. Prize pupils were all the convent cared for, the superficial qualities with which educational grants are earned.

  They were indeed as alike as two casts come out of the same mould, and this likeness was not a mere chance; it penetrated from the surface into the heart and brain. Aunt Clara had realised the importance of their likeness one to the other better than the

  Reverend Mother had, and dressed them alike so that others might see it, and of all, that Emily and Priscilla might be conscious of it always. So they had grown up to look upon themselves not as two but as one, and when it came for her to take Priscilla to the dressmaker, after their aunt’s death, she had never allowed any change to be made. If Mrs. Symond said: I think you might wear this ribbon with advantage, she always answered: I think, Mrs. Symond, that we both like the ribbon you speak of. One day Mrs. Symond had asked them when they were going to be presented at Court. Of course she did, for two debutantes meant many dresses for her to make. And to persuade them to do what she herself had always refrained from doing for Priscilla’s sake, Mrs. Symond called her assistant, and asked her to show off the dresses they were making that year. The prettiest fashions that have appeared for many a year, the dressmaker said. And they were shown berthas, flounces, plumes, stomachers, lappets, and veils. But we are not going to the Castle, are we? Priscilla had whispered, for you know, Emily, I never should have the courage to dance with a man I didn’t know. But if he didn’t know you, he wouldn’t ask you, Emily answered. I never could grasp that three-step, Emily. I should feel such a fool. And as Emily could not go alone to the Castle, she postponed their presentation at Court till next year.

  Looking back on that day at Mrs. Symond’s, Emily felt that it was not because Priscilla was afraid of dancing with men who had only just been introduced to her, or could not dance the three-step (Priscilla danced very well — the dancing-master had always said so), that she had shrunk, frightened at the thought of the Castle, but because some instinct warned her that they would meet their fate at the Castle. Priscilla may well have had a premonition that at the Castle a man would rob her of her sister. But we cannot escape our fate; and they might just as well have gone to the Castle to meet different men, to dance with them, aye, to marry them, for though marriage sunders, it is not as irreparable as death. It might have been better if she had married James Mease. But none can escape her fate. Theirs was waiting for them in the Shelbourne Hotel, whither they went to see the dresses of some friends who were going to the Drawing-Room.

  It was that evening she had met James Mease, a young man who at first had not attracted her — almost repelled her; but she had come to like him, and during the Castle season they saw a great deal of each other. She had lost her head, thinking of nothing else for six weeks but James Mease, who, though almost a stranger to her, had made her think she was willing to leave Priscilla to go to live with him; Priscilla was willing that it should be so. And Emily fell to thinking of Priscilla’s kindness, never complaining, never saying to her: If you marry this young man I shall be left alone, but trying always to efface herself, unwilling to come between her sister and her sister’s happiness. A sad happiness was that month of courtship, a great cloud coming up in her blue sky at the end of the three weeks, when James’s father and mother came to Dublin to make the acquaintance of their future daughter-in-law, saying: Our son will have ten thousand pounds, but the woman he marries must bring as much. Even when added together, her share of the money from her aunt’s fortune and her own money did not amount to ten thousand pounds. Priscilla had offered to give up her share, but she would have to live somewhere, and James would not consent to live with his sister-in-law. Priscilla was willing to sacrifice herself, to give up her money and live in the same house as James (whom she had never liked) for the sake of her sister’s happiness. Emily, too, though she had begun to think of James Mease differently, was willing to sacrifice herself for the same reasons as moved Priscilla; and she tried to persuade him that Priscilla would never divide them, that they would be happier together than separated, that he did not know Priscilla, or understand her, but would learn to
.

  She remembered the long wrangle between herself and James, up and down and along and across Stephen’s Green, through many streets, by the canal, and on its bridges while the boats passed through the locks. Everything was said that could be said, not once, but twenty, a hundred times. She had done all she could to persuade him, and had failed, saying often: But even if I wished to leave my sister, I couldn’t, for she is giving up her money to satisfy your father and mother. She had clung to him till she almost hated him and was ashamed of herself. The wisest words she had uttered were on her own doorstep, when she said: I give you your liberty. He had taken her at her word, and the last news she had of him was the news of his marriage. That was her luck — that he had married and was out of her life for ever; for if he had not married and had come back to her saying: Now that your sister is gone we can marry, she would have hated him. And he was the kind of man who would have done this, unfeeling, lacking in perception, unaware always that he had divided them for a time, and was seeking to divide them for ever. He had done that, for he was the cause of Priscilla’s death. Once it was known that her engagement with James Mease was broken off, they had had to go away somewhere, and where could they go to live down the scandal better than to their own lodge in the glen under Croagh Patrick? It was there, during the winter, that Priscilla caught the cold that preceded her cough. What is a cold and a cough? Emily asked herself. Nothing in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases. But there was blood-spitting with Priscilla’s cough, and this had brought them to Dublin, to their friend Sir Stanley Forbes, who advised them to winter in the south.

  She had not the courage to think it all out again. Of what avail was this thinking? If she could only hush her thoughts! But the mind refuses to be hushed, and a new thought suddenly presented itself, that perhaps it was Priscilla’s wish that she should remain in Smith’s Buildings, lest the dead might be forgotten. The dead are never really dead, Emily said until we cease to think of them. I should always be thinking of her, wherever I was. But if she wills it... And sitting on the little rep sofa, her eyes brimming with occasional tears, she bethought herself of the life that awaited her without Priscilla, alone in the world, without parents or relations. Aunt Clara was gone; a few distant cousins there were, dispersed over the world; a few neighbours, a few friends, scattered through Dublin; but nobody whom she could love. Lonely evenings, she said, the words provoked by the sight of the books in the bookcase, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Henry Wood, and Charlotte Yonge. All these she and Priscilla had read together on either side of the fireplace. They had been reading Lord Oakburn’s Daughters and were but half-way through the story; it would remain unread now, for she would not care to finish it since she could not share it with Priscilla. And she began to think of that strange death that none had foreseen. Sir Stanley was disappointed that the winter in the south had not shown a greater improvement in Priscilla’s health; she was thin, and white like a magnolia, his very words. But he did not anticipate that death was so near. I know he didn’t, she said, speaking aloud. I know he didn’t, she repeated, rising from the sofa, as if to give emphasis to her belief that the doctor had not suspected death to be so near.

  After wandering around the faded room aimlessly, the doctor’s study, by the spell of contrast, appeared to her, and she saw the old man, with his short, clipped beard, sitting in his Chippendale chair on the left of the carved Italian fireplace, all the carved tops of the bookcases, the infoliated mirrors with their perching birds, the inlaid tables, the bronzes and the vases. Was the rest of her life to be spent in collecting furniture and china? she asked herself; and returning to the sofa she began to listen, in her imagination, to the doctor, hearing him tell her that he did not despair of Priscilla’s ultimate recovery if she avoided living within doors as far as possible. Tuberculosis, he said, is contracted in byres and houses, never in the open air; and since you have a garden where you can sleep in hammocks every night it is not raining, I don’t see that you can do any better than to remain in Dublin. In the autumn you will go south again, where you will spend, I hope, as much of your time as possible in the open air. These were his very words. But despite all her care, Priscilla’s health did not improve, remaining about the same.

  Emily’s thoughts concentrated on a few yards beyond the gates of Smith’s Buildings, for half-way between these gates and the doctor’s house last Friday she had met Esther Nunan coming from number four. Your maid told me that you were out, Esther said, and when I asked if Priscilla was at home, I learnt she had just come in from the garden and had gone up to her room to lie down, feeling rather poorly. Emily remembered repeating the words: Feeling rather poorly, and then turning suddenly, she said: I think I’ll go for the doctor and bring him home with me. He spoke of a bad sore throat, and wrote a prescription for a gargle; but Priscilla could not gargle, her throat being too swollen. She drank a little milk that evening, and during the night her breathing became more and more difficult. And all next day she struggled, dying towards evening, Sir Stanley’s opinion being that the consumption from which she was suffering had flown to her throat and choked her. And ulceration of the larynx was the only explanation he could give of Priscilla’s sudden death.

  Emily buried her face in the cushions to shut out the sight of Priscilla’s struggles for breath; she could not endure the memory of them, and it was not until she had exhausted her tears that she remembered a fact forgotten till now, that Priscilla had died struggling for speech. She had died with something on her mind; and Emily bethought herself of the paper and pencil that Priscilla had signed to her for. She had given her both, and waited anxiously, but Priscilla was not able to write; her hand fell away, and Emily read in her eyes: I cannot speak, I cannot write. It now seemed to her that she had only read Priscilla’s eyes superficially. In her remembrance of them they seemed to say: I would give all the world to tell you, but I cannot.

  Now what could Priscilla have had to tell me? she asked herself, forgetful of her grief for the mement. We had no secrets from each other, and yet Priscilla died with something upon her mind, something that she had not told me, something that she desired above all things to confide to me. What could it be? They had never been separated; only at Aix had they ever occupied different rooms. And her thoughts passing out of Dublin back to Aix-les-Bains, to the day they arrived there, to the moment when the carriage stopped in front of the boarding-house, Emily remembered saying: Vous avez une chambre à coucher? But when it came to saying: Can we have a double-bedded room? she began to stammer: Nous voulons un lit doublé, at which the proprietress’s face changed expression. We haven’t any double-bedded rooms, she answered, but you can have two small rooms for the same price on the same floor. The thought of different rooms had frightened her, and they were about to tell the porter to replace their luggage in the carriage, when the proprietress warned them that they would find it very hard to get a double-bedded room in any of the hotels. It being the height of the season, she said, you may not be able to get a room at all. And have to sleep in the streets, Emily whispered to Priscilla, forgetful that the proprietress spoke English. The nights are very cold, the proprietress answered, and the thought of the danger that a cold night might be to Priscilla compelled her to accept the two rooms, which, after all, were in the same corridor. I will come and unlace your dress for you, and call you in the morning, Priscilla, so after all it won’t matter much. You won’t be frightened, dear, and will not forget to lock your door?

  The proprietress had promised that as soon as a double-bedded room was vacant, they should have it, but nobody left for weeks, and the room that was offered to them at last didn’t seem to please Priscilla. It wasn’t a very good room, it is true, but she wouldn’t have minded sharing it with Priscilla, and perhaps Priscilla wouldn’t have minded sharing it with her, but —— It may have been only a fancy, but she fancied that Priscilla had come to like a room to herself; or perhaps Priscilla thought that it would be safer for them to
occupy different rooms; she might have heard of the danger, or had an instinct of it. Be this as it may, Priscilla never forgot to lock her door, except once, and she was about to reprove Priscilla for her carelessness — the words were on her lips, but were stayed by the sight of Priscilla’s embarrassment at the sudden intrusion. It had seemed to her that something was thrust under the pillow; she was about to ask Priscilla what she was hiding, and she wished now that she had asked her, for if she had things might have turned out differently. But the fact that Priscilla should hide anything from her had hurt her so deeply that she asked no questions, and after unlacing Priscilla’s dress left the room abruptly.

  This was the first and only misunderstanding that had ever occurred between them; and it must be something relating to that evening, perhaps it was about the book or letter, whatever she had thrust under the sofa pillow, that Priscilla wished to tell her. But no; for she had written on a piece of paper: In the garden, or words that read like: In the garden. What connection could the garden of Smith’s Buildings have with Aix-les-Bains? It was sad, it was heart-breaking, that Priscilla should have had a secret from her, but it was worse that she should have died unable to tell it. At the memory of Priscilla’s hand dropping away from the paper, unable to write, tears rose to Emily’s eyes, and she began to think it was her duty to start for Aix to inquire the matter out at the hotel. But what could the proprietress tell her? The key to Priscilla’s secret was not in Aix but in the words she had written: In the garden. One word more would have been enough, and that word was withheld from her, and she stood thinking, wondering, not whether she would ever be happy again, but if she would be less unhappy than she was to-day.