Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Even the Cossacks exchanged glances of sympathy, and had they known the whole truth, it was not improbable that they might have revolted. Suffice to say, that for a moment Madame Ardloff feared for her husband’s safety. But his fierce brutality dominated his soldiers, and the elder Vanca was manacled, and a guard placed over him.

  The scene that then presented itself was this: - Two files of soldiers, Count Ardloff commanding, stern and implacable; one brother half-naked and bleeding, the other in irons; a pale woman with agony written on her face, wrapped up in furs, and a pair of horses, munching in their nose-bags, unconscious of ought else.

  The officer took another step back, the seven thongs whistled in the air, and again tore into red furrows the lacerated flesh. As Vanca staggered forward, his face convulsed with pain, his eyes were fixed on Madame Ardloff, and they asked, with a terrible eloquence - ‘Oh, why did you thus betray me?’ Her hands were clasped, and in her emotion, having lost all power of utterance, she strove to send forth her soul to tell him of how innocent she was. Then another blow fell, and the blood squirted horrible, and the flesh hung ragged. It was sickening, and from sheer horror and nausea Madame Ardloff fainted. But it was her husband’s intention that she should witness, to the end, the revenge he had so carefully prepared, and diving his hand into the pocket of her mantle, he produced the bottle of sel volatile. With this he quickly restored her to consciousness, and then she heard him saying: ‘Awake, awake, for I wish you to see how I punish those who insult me.’

  Vanca had now received nine strokes. He was but a raw mass of quivering flesh. Helpless and faintly, like one in a nightmare, Madame Ardloff strove to speak, until at last the words long denied her rose to her lips, but they came too late, and, mad with pain, the tortured man, with a whirling, staggering motion, precipitated himself on to the drawn sword, and fell to the ground a corpse.

  This was unexpected. There were hurried words, and a trampling of feet, and a deep silence, but Madame Ardloff remembered little. The imprecations the elder brother hurled after her as she was driven away sounded dim and indistinct in her ear during the long days of delirium which followed this double tragedy, for on arriving home she saw her husband make out the order for Vanca’s transportation to the mercury mines. She pleaded and prayed wildly, but the Count only smiled grimly in reply to her hysterical supplications. It seemed to her that the heavens should fall to crush, that the earth should open to receive so inhuman a monster. She raised her hands, she screamed madly, her thoughts danced before her, faded, and then there was a blank, and during several weeks, for her, Time stood still.

  Slowly her senses returned to her, slowly through a dim mist, through a heavy torpor, that held her powerless and inert; they returned to her, and with them came the ghastly remembrance of a terrible crime. The subject was never alluded to. The affair was hushed up; but time could neither blot nor tear this cruel page out of Madame Ardloff’s life. Her only consolation was the certitude that no pain was in store for her greater than she experienced, when, years after, in a ball-room at St Petersburg, Count Vanca, an old man with long white hair, and a life’s sorrow on his face, said to her, ‘Madame, I hope your children are very well.’

  DRIED FRUIT

  THE PATIENT TRANQUILLITY of West Street, Thurlow Square, was rarely disturbed by hansom cabs, and the only sounds the ear took note of were the cries of the butcher-boys, the jangling of a belated barrel organ, and the measured tramp of the policeman. At seven o’clock in the morning, as if acting on one inspiration, the Venetian blinds were raised: all revealed meagre strips of red or green curtains, and in each drawingroom window there were a couple of thin chairs, with antimacassars hung over the backs. Immediately after, servant girls appeared and began scrubbing the steps. Their dirty print dresses and frayed boots were an epitome of English middle-class poverty; and as they knelt with their heels in the air they were proclamations of lodgings to let.

  About the fashionable end of the street, - the corner that commanded a view of the square, several familes knew each other and were on visiting terms. At undetermined periods Mrs Wilson was in the habit of calling, and stopping to tea with, Mrs Smith; the hospitality was of course invariably returned, and sometimes both went to partake of that meal at Mrs Lewis’s. Landlady jealousy made them often refer to Mr Barnwell, who was admitted to be the oldest inhabitant in the street, although the date of his arrival was somewhat problematic. Mrs Lewis had inherited him twenty years ago on the death of her mother, Mrs Stokes, with the house and furniture; and as Mrs Wilson said to Mrs Smith, whenever they caught sight of the old gentleman at his window: ‘He ‘as been as good as a little fortune to them at twenty-nine. Thirty shillings a week for the dining-room set, not counting what she makes out of his breakfasts, dinners, and teas, and that is, I’ll be bound, a pretty penny.’

  Thus it was that Mrs Lewis’s good luck made her a source of envy to the rest of the street. She seemed to her neighbours to be exempt from all the ordinary cares of West Street. Trade might be depressed, bad seasons might follow each other in intolerable succession, but they did not bring cards to her window: her house remained ever free of the ominous signs; and had it not been, indeed, for her difficulties with a naval officer who occupied her top front bedroom, and broke her candlesticks when he tumbled up stairs as late even as two o’clock in the morning, she would have been able to pose as quite a superior being at Mrs Smith’s tea parties. And it was to this mote in her neighbour’s happiness that Mrs Wilson invariably alluded when she as much as suspected her friend of thinking of the two young ladies who had lately been staying at 43. Mrs Wilson could attack Mrs Lewis in no other way. The tipsy naval officer was the one assailable point in Mrs Lewis’s household. Nothing could be said against Mrs Lavington, the middle-aged lady who for the last ten years had occupied the drawing-room set; and as for Mr Barnwell, was he not a kind of advertisement of respectability for the entire street? His respectability was, as it were, a common wealth; his person and his purse belonged to 29, but his influence extended nearly as far as the Fulham Road. No doubt the worthy gentleman was quite unconscious of his benedictine reputation; but certain it is that his leaving West Street would have been regarded as a calamity almost equal to the establishment of shops, and as a forewarning of a not far distant depreciation of house property. Nor can it be asserted that this confidence in Mr Barnwell was altogether misplaced. Seeing him at his window in the morning vaguely gazing at the trees of the square, it was impossible to mistake him for anything but what is known as a ‘safe man’ - the most imaginative would not suspect either face or window of any desire for change. The grey dust of time, that makes all things look alike, had effected a curious likeness between them: the fat, round, colourless cheeks, slightly pitted with the small-pox, the double chin, the forehead covered with a brown wig, harmonized perfectly with the lustreless window. Both looked as if they were meditating a problem that neither would be able to solve.

  And yet Mr Barnwell could not be called a melancholy man. During twenty years of intimacy he had never failed to exchange a pleasant word with Mrs Lewis when he met her in the passage, or when she came into his study to settle his weekly account. This little business transaction was performed every Wednesday evening, punctually at five o’clock, and it varied in amount but a few shillings from year’s end to year’s end.

  Nevertheless, his life had not always been so methodically arranged. Mrs Lewis remembered when he used to have friends who came to dine with him, and when he used to go to the theatre; but for the last ten years he had gradually given up going out in the evening. At first he used to complain of Mrs Lewis’s cooking. He gave a good deal of trouble by asking for special dishes; but habit grew upon him, and he had learned to content himself with what she could do. Now he never grumbled at even the plainest of food, whereas she, ashamed of her lack of culinary imagination, and presuming on their long acquaintanceship, would sometimes inveigh against his extreme seclusion and advise him to go up to town and
‘get a change’. Smiling, he would assure her that he was satisfied with her dinners, and he would urge that he must get on with his work: that he had his books to arrange. Nobody knew what his work was, and his books were a perpetual source of terror to the servants. When they were touched, Mr Barnwell complained; when they were left untouched, Missus said the dust was something shocking. Shelves had been put up in every available corner of bedroom and sittingroom; but even then the space did not suffice, heaps and single volumes encumbered table, chiffonier, and mantelboard. There were histories of all countries, of all times reaching to within three hundred years of the present day - then there was a blank unbroken, save by Macaulay’s History of England. Above the ponderous tomes dealing with the political constitutions of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, and France, there were volumes on volumes of travels — travels in South Africa, in Sweden, in North America. The comment of every parlour-maid on these books had been: ‘I suppose he was brought up when he was young in those foreign countries, and he likes to read about them now.’

  But, although little was known about him, Mr Barnwell did not give the impression that he had anything to conceal. He spoke often and freely about himself, and Mrs Lewis constantly thought she knew as much about her lodger as she did of herself. It was only when she was questioned that she began to suspect that she knew no more than that his father and mother were dead, that he had lived in London nearly all his life - facts that, considering he was obviously over sixty years of age, and had lived in 29, West Street, for more than half that time, were sufficiently patent to everybody. Therefore, a certain glamour of mystery hung about Mr Barnwell - hung about this old man, who, with his money safely invested in the funds, was living his life calmly and soberly to the end. He breakfasted at nine, wrote or read for three or four hours, had some lunch, went out for a walk if it were fine, dined at six, and spent the evening in reading, rejoicing in that only happiness which does not disappoint us - habitude.

  Like us all, he had had his love affair. When he was one and twenty an invitation to a fashionable ball had been procured for him. It was his first introduction to the world. There he had met Julia Gay thorn, the belle of the season of 1850. She was surrounded by admirers, and young Barnwell was surprised when she accepted him for a waltz. Afterwards he met her at other balls, in the park, and at theatres, and eventually he was asked to call. He was shy and timid before this beautiful girl. She treated him good-humouredly, but without seeming to pay attention to what he said. Nevertheless, before the end of the season, as they were looking over an album of photographs, he asked her for her portrait. She gave him one. Then two years passed without him seeing her, and during this time she became engraven on his heart - became, as it were, part of himself. He thought of her as a vision of wonderful sweetness that had floated across his life, that was now to him irretrievably lost; and when he met her unexpectedly at an archery party in Sussex it was with difficulty that he spoke without betraying his emotion. Never did he think he had seen such exquisite elegance, and as he watched her drawing her bow to shoot at the mark he thought of a statue of Diane la Chasseresse. Towards the end of the day, when the tournament was over, she talked to him almost as an old friend; and, leaving the company, they walked side by side through the evergreens. It was a clear autumn evening, and as they passed round each turning a clapping of wings was heard in the trees, and a flock of rooks flew over the sloping meadows into the gleam of a sunset that faded.

  Exactly how it came to pass he could never say; and, afterwards, he could only think of what had happened as of a half-remembered dream. He remembered that the horror of losing her had suddenly overcome him, and that awkwardly and abruptly he had said, ‘Miss Gaythorn, I love you; I can’t help saying so.’ She made no answer; but a swift look of surprise was enough: he saw his mistake and apologized.

  Two years after he heard she was engaged; then that she was married. Some men would have sought oblivion in dissipation; he sought it in books. He read deeply and profoundly, the taste grew upon him, and gradually, without any violent transition, he gave up society and devoted himself to study. His disappointment in love had fallen upon him heavily, and, as the years went by, it seemed more and more to have dried up the sap of life within him, and to have made of him a reserved, if not a taciturn, man. Once, more than a quarter of a century ago, he had said to Mrs Stokes that he could never love anyone again, and a former servant maid declared that she had caught him kissing, with tears in his eyes, the photograph of the lady in white that stood in the little gilt frame upon the mantelboard. The tale, after having been the subject of kitchen jokes for years, was now forgotten, and West Street gossiped only of Mrs Lewis’s luck with her lodgers. During the last year the chief events that had disturbed its peace were that Mrs Smith had had her drawing-room floor unlet nearly all the summer, that Mrs Wilson had been cheated out of fifteen pounds by a runaway lodger; but the monotonous murmur of suburban life was not fairly broken until Mrs Lavington electrified Mrs Lewis by saying that she intended giving up her rooms, and was going to live in the South of England. The news was not considered displeasing by the rest of the street, and Mrs Lewis had difficulty in forcing her friends to acquiesce in the explanation that Mrs Lavington was leaving, not because she was dissatisfied with the attendance or the price of gas, but merely because she had come into a little property in the Isle of Wight, and was going to live there.

  Then came troubles and trials, and Mrs Lewis at length learned to appreciate the difficulties her neighbours had so long laboured under. Single ladies, with very blond hair, had the impertinence to attempt to bribe her with an extra half sovereign a week. There were also young gentlemen who came and stipulated for latch keys and other liberties still more objectionable. Indeed, there was no lack of offers - offers that both Mrs Smith and Mrs Wilson would have gladly accepted, but which the respectability of twenty-nine could not think of considering. Mrs Lewis had saved money, and was now not going to deny herself the luxury of choosing her customers. Nevertheless, the pride of being the successful landlady of her street burned in her bosom, and she continued to torture all the house agents and clerks within a radius of three miles. Emma and the cook were fairly worn out showing people up and down stairs.

  ‘Who’s that, I wonder?’ said cook, the third Saturday of the second month after the immemorial departure of Mrs Lavington, as she leaned over the table finishing her dinner with a piece of bread.

  ‘Someone come to look at the drawing-rooms, most like,’ Emma replied, without moving from her chair.

  ‘Then why don’t you go up and open the door?’

  ‘Where’s the use since Missus won’t ‘ave any of them?’ returned Emma; and she went upstairs grumbling something to the effect that she couldn’t expect to have all her lodgers made to order like Mr Barnwell.

  On opening the street door, the servant girl found herself facing a tall, ladylike woman, too youthfully dressed in a fashionably-cut, dark-cloth dress.

  ‘Can I see the apartments?’ she asked, in a clear, distinct voice.

  Having - to use her own expression - ‘taken stock of ‘er’, and seen that she was quite respectable, and of the sort they wanted, Emma replied:

  ‘Certainly, Ma’am. Will you walk upstairs.’

  On arriving on the first floor, after much shaking of woodwork, and rattling of door-handles, it became clear that the rooms were locked, and, as cook hadn’t the key, it was conjectured that it must be in Missus’s pocket. What was to be done? Would the lady be so kind as to call again? But the lady declared that to be impossible - at least for some time - and, in Emma’s experience, some time meant going over to Mrs Wilson’s or Mrs Smith’s, and taking rooms there. What was to be done?

  Missus was expected home every minute, but it was difficult to ask the lady to wait; there was no room to show her into. Emma did not think she could well offer her a seat in the ‘all, so respectable did she look; so after a consultation with cook, it was decided that, as Mr Barnwell was not
expected home before evening, it could be no harm to make use of his sitting-room. Emma pulled up the blinds, wheeled forward an armchair, and after apologizing for not having a daily paper to offer her, left the lady, who gave her name as Mrs Wood ville, to her reflections.

  She was a woman that a close observer would declare to be on the wrong side of fifty; he would also detect in her face the indefinable something that so eloquently bespeaks an unrestful life. She was evidently the heroine of a hundred adventures; and there was about her an unmistakeable air of supper parties, of jewels, of divorce, of Nice. Sitting in Mr Barnwell’s armchair she made a strange contrast with her surroundings; an eight-buttoned glove found in a hermit’s rocky cell could not suggest a more incongruous association of ideas. The May sunlight came floating into the room, the fire burned low in the grate, and the books in the high cases seemed to be dreaming of the many long years of quiet that they had been the givers of. Mrs Woodville, too, was dreaming of rest, of peace from the world. She was weary of it, but the tightly-fitting astrakhan-trimmed jacket attested that it was not yet entirely forgotten. Her figure remained to her, and she had not learnt to despise its graces, although she was now determined to devote herself to the education of her sons. It was to be near them, and that, in their behalf, she might eke out her jointure, to the last penny the dressmaker did not demand, that she had come up to London and was seeking quiet suburban lodgings.

  And she thought of her sons until the silence of the place awoke her from her reveries. Then, raising her head from her hand, she looked around the room, seeing in its tranquillity and dust the ideal life which she was now so eagerly sighing for. The calm and peace of years that the apartment, as it were, exhaled, interested her; she began to wonder who the owner was, and to ask herself if he had been happier in his solitude than she in her dissipation. The idea getting the better of her she got up, and walking about, sought for traces that would reveal his individuality to her.