Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “Quand on boit du Pomard on devient bon on aime,

  On devient aussi bon que le Pomard lui-même—”

  we drank, hoping that the wine would awaken us. But the effect of that strong Southern wine seemed to be more lethargic than exhilarating, and when dinner was over and we had returned to our seats by the fireside we were too weary to talk, and too nervous.

  The next morning, the coffee and the rolls and butter were ready before Doris, and the vexation of seeing the breakfast growing cold was recompensed by the pleasure of teasing her, urging her to pass her arms into her dressing-gown, to come as she was, it did not matter what she had on underneath. The waiter did not count; he was not a man, he was a waiter, a pink creature, pinker than anything in the world, except a baby’s bottom, and looking very like that.

  “Hasten, dear, hasten!” and I went back to the salon and engaged in chatter with the old provincial, my English accent contrasting strangely with his. It was the first time I had heard the Southern accent. At Plessy I had heard all accents, Swiss, German, Italian; there was plenty of Parisian accent there, and I had told a Parisian flower-woman, whose husband was a Savoyard, that I declined to believe any more in the Southern accent “C’est une blague qu’on m’a faite”; but at Orelay I had discovered the true accent, and I listened to the old man for the sake of hearing it. He was asking me for my appreciation of the wine we had drunk last night when Doris entered in a foamy white dressing-gown.

  “You liked the wine, dear, didn’t you? He wants to know if we will have the same wine for twelve-o’clock breakfast.”

  “Dear me, it’s eleven o’clock now,” Doris answered, and she looked at the waiter.

  “Monsieur and Madame will go for a little walk; perhaps you would like to breakfast at one?”

  We agreed that we could not breakfast before one, and our waiter suggested a visit to the cathedral — it would fill up the time pleasantly and profitably; but Doris, when she had had her coffee, wanted to sit on my knee and to talk to me; and then there was a piano, and she wanted to play me some things, or rather I wanted to hear her. But the piano was a poor one; the notes did not come back, she said, and we talked for some hours without perceiving that the time was passing. After lunch the waiter again inquired if we intended to go for a little walk; there were vespers about four in the cathedral.

  “It would do Monsieur and Madame good.”

  “The walk or the cathedral?” we inquired, and, a little embarrassed, the old fellow began to tell us that he had not been to the cathedral for some years, but the last time he was there he had been much impressed by the darkness. It was all he could do to find his way from pillar to pillar; he had nearly fallen over the few kneeling women who crouched there listening to the clergy intoning Latin verses. According to his account there were no windows anywhere except high up in the dome. And leaning his hands on the table, looking like all the waiters that ever existed or that will ever exist, his tablier, reaching nearly to his chin, upheld by strings passed over the shoulders, he told us that it was impossible to see what was happening in the chancel; but there had seemed to be a great number of clergy seated in the darkness at the back, for one heard voices behind the tall pieces of furniture singing Latin verses; one only heard the terminations of the words, an “us” and a “noster,” and words ending in “e,” and the organ always coming in a little late.

  “My good man,” I said, “your description leaves nothing to be desired. Why should I go to the cathedral unless to verify your impressions? I am sure the service is exactly as you describe it, and I would not for the world destroy the picture you have evoked of those forgotten priests intoning their vespers in the middle of the granite church behind a three-branched candlestick.”

  The poor man left the room very much disconcerted, feeling, Doris said, as if he had lost one of the forks.

  “Thank Heaven that matter is done with — a great weight is off my mind.”

  “But there is the museum. You would like to see that?” said Doris, and a change came into my face.

  “Well, Doris, the waiter has told us that there is a celebrated study by David in the museum, ‘The Nymph of Orelay.’”

  “But, dear one, am I not your nymph of Orelay?” and Doris slipped on her knees and put her arms about me. “Will I not do as well as the painted creature in the museum?”

  “Far better,” I said, “far better. Now we are free, Doris, freed from the cathedral and from the museum. All the day belongs to us, and to-morrow we may pass as we like.”

  “And so we will,” Doris said meditatively; and so we did, dear reader, and I consider the time was well spent, for by so doing we avoided catching cold, a thing easy to do when a mistral is blowing. It was not until the following evening we remembered that time was always on the wing, that our little bags would have to be packed. Next morning we were going.

  “Going away by the train,” Doris said regretfully. “Would we were going away in a carriage! We shall leave Orelay knowing nothing of it but this suite of apartments.”

  “There is no reason why we should not drive,” and I stopped packing my bag, and stood looking at her.

  “I wonder if we should have stayed three days if we had not discovered these rooms? Dear one, I think I should not have meant so much to you in those humbler rooms: you attach much importance to these cornices and hangings.”

  “I should have loved you always, Doris, but I think I can love you better here,” and with our bags in our hands we wandered from the bedroom into the drawing-room and stood admiring its bygone splendour. “Doris, dear, you must play me ‘The Nut Bush.’ I want to hear it on that old piano. Tinkle it, dear, tinkle it, and don’t play ‘The Nut Bush’ too sentimentally, nor yet too gaily.”

  “Which way will you have it?” she asked; “‘a true love’s truth or a light love’s art’?”

  “I would have it dainty and fantastic as Schumann wrote it, ‘only the song of a secret bird.’”

  “With a pathos of loneliness in it?”

  “That is it,” I cried, “that is the right time to play it in, without stress on either side.... No, you mustn’t leave the piano, Doris. Sing me some songs. Go on singing Schumann or Schubert; there are no other songs. Let me hear you sing ‘The Moonlight’ or ‘The Lotus-flower.’ Schumann and Schubert were the singing birds of the fifties; I love their romantic sentimentalities, orange gardens, south winds, a lake with a pinnace upon it, and a nightingale singing in a dark wood by a lonely shore; that is how they felt, how they dreamed.” And resigning herself to my humour, she sang song after song till at last, awaking from a long reverie of music and old association of memories, I said, “Play me a waltz, Doris; I would hear an old-time waltz played in this room; its romantic flourishes will evoke the departed spirits.” And very soon, sitting in my chair with half-closed eyes, it seemed to me that I saw crinolines faintly gliding over the floor, and white-stockinged feet, sloping shoulders and glistening necks with chignons — swan-like women, and long-whiskered cavaliers wearing peg-top trousers and braided coats dancing or talking with them.... The music suddenly stopped and Doris said:

  “If we are to catch our train we must go on with our packing.”

  “You mustn’t talk to me of trains,” and overcome with a Schumann-like longing and melancholy I took her in my arms, overcome by her beauty. She was perfection. No Chelsea or Dresden figure was ever more dainty, gayer, or brighter. She was Schumann and Dresden, but a Dresden of an earlier period than Schumann; but why compare her to anything? She was Doris, the very embodiment of her name.

  “Ah, Doris, why are we leaving here? Why can’t we remain here for ever?”

  “It is strange,” she said; “I feel the charm of those old stately rooms as much as you do. But, dearest, we have missed the train.”

  The pink waiter came up, I promised to hasten, but my love of Doris delayed us unduly, and we arrived at the station only to hear that the train had gone away some ten minutes before. The train that
had left was the only good train in the day, and missing it had given us another twenty-four hours in Orelay; but Doris was superstitious. “Our three days are done,” she said; “if we don’t go today we shall go to-morrow, and to go on the fourth day would be unlucky. What shall we do all day? The spell has been broken. We have left our hotel. Let us take a carriage,” she pleaded, “and drive to the next station. The sun is shining, and the country is beautiful; we saw it from the railway, a strange red country grey with olives, olive orchards extending to the very foot of the mountains, and mingling with the pine trees descending the slopes.”

  “The slopes!” I said, “the precipitous sides of that high rock! Shall I ever forget it, beginning like the tail of a lion and rising up to the sky, towering above the level landscape like a sphinx.”

  “The drive would be delightful!”

  “And it would be a continuation of the romance of the old Empire drawing-room. A post-chaise would be the thing if we could discover one.”

  Sometimes Nature seems to conspire to carry out an idea, and though no veritable post-chaise of old time was discovered in the coach-house behind the courtyard in which the ilex trees flourished, we happened to catch sight of a carriage some twenty-five or thirty years old, a cumbersome old thing hung upon C springs, of the security of which the coachman seemed doubtful. He spoke disparagingly, telling us that the proprietor had been trying to sell it, but no one would buy it, so heavy was it on the horses’ backs, so out of fashion one was ashamed to go out in it. The coachman’s notions of beauty did not concern us, but Doris dreaded lest one of the wheels should come off; however, on examination it was found to be roadworthy, and I said to Doris as I helped her into it:

  “If it be no post-chaise, at all events ladies wearing crinolines have sat inside it, that is certain, and gentlemen wearing peg-top trousers with braid upon them. Good God, Doris, if you were to wear a crinoline I should love you beyond hope of repentance. Don’t I remember when I was a boy every one wore white stockings; I had only heard of black ones, and I always hoped to meet a lady wearing black stockings... now my hope is to meet one wearing white.”

  “We might have searched the town for a crinoline and a pair of white stockings.”

  “Yes, and I might have discovered a black silk stock. I wonder how I should have looked in it. Doris,” I said, “we have missed the best part of our adventure. We forgot to dress for the part we are playing, the lovers of Orelay.”

  Who will disagree with me when I say that no adventure is complete unless it necessitates an amount of ceremonial, the wearing of wigs, high bodices, stockings, and breeches? Every one likes to dress himself up, whether for a masquerade ball or to be enrolled in some strange order. Have you, reader, ever seen any one enrolled in any of these orders? If you have, you will excuse the little comedy and believe it to be natural — the comedy that Doris and I played in the old carriage driving from Orelay to Verlancourt, where we hoped to breakfast.

  We could hardly speak for excitement. Doris thought of how she would look in a crinoline, and I remembered the illustrations in an early edition of Balzac of which I am the happy possessor. How nice the men looked in the light trousers and the black stockings of the period; and crossing my legs I followed with interest the line of my calf. Somebody did that in “Les Illusions Perdues.” She and I lay back thinking which story in “The Human Comedy” was the most applicable to our case; and the only one we could think of was when Madame Bargeton, a provincial blue-stocking, left Angoulême for Paris with Lucien de Rubempré. There were no railways in the forties; they must have travelled in a post-chaise. Yes, I remember their journey, faintly it is true, but I remember it. Madame Bargeton was a woman of five-and-thirty at least, and Doris was much younger. Lucien was only one-and-twenty, and even at that time I was more than that. The names of these people and of the people they met at the theatre and in the Tuileries Gardens — Rastignac, Madame d’Espard, the Duchess of Chaulieu, Madame de Rochefide, and Canalis — carried my mind back from crinolines and white stockings, from peg-top trousers and braided coats, to the slim trousers that were almost breeches and to the high-breasted gowns of the Restoration. Our mothers and fathers wore the crinolines and the peg-top trousers, and our grandfathers the tight trousers and the black silk stocks. The remembrance of these costumes filled me with a tenderness and a melancholy I could not subdue, and I could see that Doris was thinking of the same subject as myself.

  We were thinking of that subject which interested men before history began, the mutability of human things, the vanishing of generations. Young as she was, Doris was thinking of death; nor is it the least extraordinary she should, for as soon as any one has reached the age of reflection the thought of death may come upon him at any moment, though he be in the middle of a ballroom or lying in the arms of his mistress. If the scene be a ballroom he has only to look outside, and the night will remind him that in a few years he will enter the eternal night; or if the scene be a bedroom the beautiful face of his mistress may perchance remind him of another whose face was equally beautiful and who is now under the earth; lesser things will suffice to recall his thoughts from life to death, a rose petal falling on a marble table, a dead bird in the path as he walks in his garden. And after the thought of death the most familiar thought is the decay of the bodily vesture. The first grey hair may seem to us an amusing accident, but very few years will pass before another and yet another appear, and if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay has begun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we go to the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificially the falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and its slenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athlete say that he could no longer run races of a hundred yards; he was half a second or a quarter of a second slower than he was last year. I looked at him saying, “But you are only one-and-twenty,” and he answered, “Yes, that is it.” A football player I believe is out of date at eight-and-twenty. Out of date! What a pathos there is in the words — out of date! Suranné, as the French say. How are we to render it in English? By the beautiful but artificial word “yester-year”? Yester-year perhaps, for a sorrow clings about it; it conveys a sense of autumn, of “the long decline of roses.” There is something ghostlike in the out-of-date. The landscape about Plessy had transported us back into antiquity, making us dream of nymphs and dryads, but the gilt cornices and damask hangings and the salon at Orelay had made us dream of a generation ago, of the youth of our parents. Ancient conveys no personal meaning, but the out-of-date transports us, as it were, to the stern of the vessel, throws us into a mournful attitude; we lean our heads upon our hands and, looking back, we see the white wake of the vessel with shores sinking in the horizon and the crests of the mountains passing away into the clouds.

  While musing on these abstract questions raised by my remark that we had not managed our adventure properly, since we had forgotten to provide ourselves with proper costumes, the present suddenly thrust itself upon me.

  “Good God!” I said to Doris, “let us look back, for we shall never see Orelay again!” and she from one window, and I from the other, saw the spires of Orelay for the last time. We could not tear ourselves away, but fortunately the road turned; Orelay was blotted out from our sight for ever, and we sank back to remember that a certain portion of our lives was over and done, a beautiful part of our lives had been thrown into the void, into the great rubble-heap of emotions that had been lived through, that are no more.

  “Of what are you thinking, dear? You have been far away. This is the first time we have been separated, and we are not yet five miles from Orelay.”

  “Five miles! Ah, if it were only five!”

  We did not speak for a long time, and watching the midday sun, I thought that peradventure it was not farther from us than yesterday. Were I to say so to Doris she would answer, “It will be the same in Paris,” but if she did it would be the first falsehood she had told me, for
we both knew that things are never the same; things change — for better or worse, but they change.

  This last sentence seems to me somewhat trite, and if I were to continue this story any further my pen would run into many other superficial and facile observations, for my mind is no longer engrossed with the story. I no longer remember it; I do not mean that I do not remember whether we got to Verlancourt, whether we had breakfast, or whether we drove all the way to Paris with relays of horses. I am of course quite certain about the facts: we breakfasted at Verlancourt, and after breakfast we asked the coachman whether he would care to go on to Paris with us; he raised his eyes— “The carriage is a very old one, surely, Monsieur — —” Doris and I laughed, for, truth to tell, we had been so abominably shaken that we were glad to exchange the picturesque old coach of our fathers’ generation for the train.

  These stories are memories, not inventions, and an account of the days I spent in Paris would interest nobody; all the details are forgotten, and invention and remembrance do not agree any better than the goat and the cabbage. So, omitting all that does not interest me — and if it does not interest me how can it interest the reader? — I will tell merely that my adventure with Doris was barren of scandal or unpleasant consequences. Her mother, a dear unsuspicious woman — whether her credulity was the depth of folly or the depth of wisdom I know not; there are many such mothers, my blessing be upon them! — took charge of her daughter, and Doris and her mother returned to England. I am afraid that when I confess that I did not speak to Doris of marriage I shall forfeit the good opinion of my reader, who will, of course, think that a love story with such an agreeable creature as Doris merited a lifetime of devotion; but I pray the reader to discover an excuse for me in the fact that Doris had told me when we were at Plessy that there was no question of her marrying any one but Albert. Had she not sacrificed the great love of her life in order that she might remain constant to Albert? Is it to be expected, then, that having done that, she would put Albert aside and throw her lot in with mine? She might have done this; men and women act inconsequently. Having on one occasion refused to drop the mutton chop for the shadow, on the next occasion they would drop it for the shadow of the shadow; but Doris was made of sterner stuff, and some months afterwards she wrote me a steady, sensible little letter telling me that she was going to be married, and that it seemed to her quite natural that she should marry Albert. Years have passed away, and nothing has happened to lead me to believe that she has not proved a true and loving wife. Albert has always told me that he found all the qualities in her which he had foreseen from the first time he looked upon her pretty, sparkling face. Frown not, reader; accuse me not of superficial cynicism! Albert is part of the world’s inheritance. You may be Albert yourself — every one has been or will be Albert; Albert is in us all, just as I am in you all. Doris, too, is in you, dear lady who sit reading my book — Doris my three-days mistress at Orelay, and Doris the faithful spouse of Albert for twenty years in a lonely London suburb.