by George Moore
Dan, aren’t you going to see your horse run? cried I. He’ll run the same whether I’m looking at him or not. And Dan, in his long yellow mackintosh, hurrying through the bookies, rose up in my mind, as true and distinct and characteristic of Ireland as the poor woman I had discovered among the Dublin mountains. She had fixed herself on my mind as she was in a single moment. Dan I had seen many times, in all kinds of different circumstances; all the same, it is in his mackintosh at the Curragh meeting, on his way to the urinal, that I remember him — in his tall silk hat (every one wore a tall silk hat at the Curragh in the ‘seventies); but Dan was only half himself in a hat, for whoever saw him remembers the long white skull over which he trailed a lock of black hair — the long skull which I have inherited from my mother’s family — and the long pale face; and his hands were like mine, long, delicate, female hands; one of Dan’s sisters had the most beautiful hands I ever saw. He’ll run the same whether I’m looking at him or not, and Dan laughed craftily, for craft and innocency were mingled strangely in his face. Dan had a sense of humour. Or did I mistake a certain naturalness for humour? Be that as it may, when I was in Galway I was often tempted to ride over to see him.
It will be difficult to get him on to paper, I reflected. His humour will not transpire if I’m not very careful, for, though I may transcribe the very words he uttered, they will mean little on paper unless I get his atmosphere: the empty house at Dunamon, the stables about it filled with racehorses, most of them broken down, for no four legs ever stood more than two years’ training over the rough fields which Dan called his racecourse. A four-year-old, with back sinews and suspensory ligaments sound, rarely stood in the Dunamon stables, a chaser or two perchance. All the same Dan did not lose money on the turf; a stroke of luck kept him going for a long time, and these strokes of luck happened every five or six years. Every five or six years he would arrive at the Curragh with a two-year-old, which, on account of its predecessors’ failures, would be quoted on the list at ten to one. Dan knew how to back him quietly; his backing was done surreptitiously, without taking any one into his confidence, not even his cousins. It was no use going to Dunamon to ask him questions; the only answer one ever got was:
There he is, quite well, but whether he can gallop or not, I can’t tell you. I’ve nothing to try him with. There he is; go and look at him.
At the post he might advise us to put a fiver on him, if he wasn’t in too great a hurry. Is your money on him, Dan? one of his cousins cried. Dan turned only to say: it’s all right, and from his words we guessed, and guessed rightly, that the horse had been backed to win seven or eight thousand pounds, enough to keep the Dunamon establishment going for the next four or five years.
As soon as a horse broke down he was let loose on Lagaphouca, a rocky headland, where the cracks of yesteryear picked up a living as best they could. He treated his horses as the master of the harriers treated his hounds: intelligent animals who could be counted upon to feed themselves. He loved them, too, in his own queer way, for he never made any attempt to sell them, knowing that the only use they could be put to, after he had finished training them, would be to draw cabs; and though food was scarce in Lagaphouca in winter, they were probably happier there than they would have been in a livery-stable. Only once did Dan sell his horses. My brother, the Colonel, succeeded in buying three from him. Any three you like, Dan said, at twenty-five pounds apiece. At that time Lagaphouca was full of wild horses, and the Colonel’s story is that he only just escaped being eaten, which is probably an exaggeration. But he chose three, and his choice was successful. He won may races.... But I must keep to my own story.
I had wandered round the church of the Templars, and, after admiring the old porch, and the wig-maker’s shop, and the cloister, turned into Pump Court. Up there aloft Edward was sleeping. Then, leaving Pump Court, I found my way through a brick passage to a seat under the plane trees in Fountain Court, and I sat there waiting for Symons, who returned home generally about one. The Temple clock clanged out the half-hour, and I said: Tonight he must be sleeping out, and continued my memories to the tune of water dripping, startled now and then by the carp plunging in the silence, recollecting suddenly that the last time I went to Dunamon, Dan was discovered by me before an immense peat fire burning in an open grate. The chimney-piece had fallen some time ago; one of the marbles had been broken, and it was difficult to replace the slab. No mason in the country could undertake the job; all the skilled workmen had gone out of the country, he said. But one did not discuss the evils of emigration with Dan, knowing what his answer would be.
As long, he would say, as the people want to go to America they’ll go, and when America is out of fashion they’ll stay at home.... There will always be enough people here for me.
On one occasion when I rode over to Dunamon to get news of what horses Dan was going to run at the next meeting of the Curragh, Bridget opened the door to me. The master is not in the house, she said, but if you’ll wait in the drawing-room I’ll go and find him for you. I would have preferred to go round to the stables to seek Dan myself; he was generally to be found in the stables, but not wishing to distress Bridget I walked into the room and my eyes went at once to the piano on which his sisters had played, and to the pictures they had admired. The room was empty, cheerless, dilapidated, but it was strangely clean for a room in the charge of an Irish peasant of Bridget’s class. I shall speak of her anon; now I must speak of the two pictures of dogs going after birds, reddish dogs with long ears, for I used to detest them when I was a child — why I never knew, they seemed foolish; now they seemed merely quaint, and I wondered at my former aversion. Under one of them stood the piano — a grand, made in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Virgin’s Prayer lay still on top of a heap of music unlocked into by Dan, for when he touched a piano it was to play his memories of operas heard long ago in his youth. No doubt he often turned for refreshment to this piano after an excellent dinner cooked by Bridget, who, when she had done washing up, would appear in the drawing-room, for she was not confined to the bedroom and the kitchen. Dan was a human fellow, who would not keep his mistress unduly in the kitchen, and I can see Bridget bringing her knitting with her, and hear Dan playing to her, until, overtaken by love or weariness, he would cease to strum Traviata or Trovatore and go to her.
Nobody ever witnessed this scene, but it must have happened just as I tell it.
A pretty girl Bridget certainly was, and one that any man would have liked to kiss, and one whom I should like to have kissed had I not been prevented by a prejudice. We are all victims of prejudice of one kind or another, and as the prejudice which prevented me from kissing Bridget inclines towards those which are regarded as virtues, I will tell the reader that the reason I refrained from kissing Dan’s mistress was because it has always been the tradition in the West that my family never yielded to such indulgences as peasant mistresses or the esuriences of hot punch: nobody but Archbishop McHale was allowed punch in my father’s house; the common priests who dined there at election times had to lap claret. And, proud of my family’s fortitudes, I refrained from Bridget.
But if you respect your family so much, why do you lift the veil on Dan’s frailties? I often asked myself, and the answer my heart gave back was: if I did not do so, I should not think of Dan at all; and what we all dread most is to be forgotten. If I don’t write about him I shall not be able to forget the large sums of money I lost by being put on the wrong horses. I am sure he would like to make amends to me for those losses; and the only way he can do this now is by giving me sittings. His brother and sisters will, no doubt, think my portrait in bad taste, the prejudices of our time being that a man’s frailties should not be written about. It is difficult to understand why a mistress should be looked upon as a frailty, and writing about the sin more grievous than the sin itself. These are questions which might be debated till morning, and as it is very nearly morning now, it will be well to leave their consideration to some later time, a
nd to decide at once that Dan shall become a piece of literature in my hands. It is no part of my morality to urge that nobody’s feelings should be regarded if the object be literature. But I would ask why one set of feelings should be placed above another? Why the feelings of my relations should be placed above Dan’s? For, if Dan were in a position to express himself now, who would dare to say that he would like his love of Bridget to be forgotten? There is nothing more human, as Pater remarks, than the wish to be remembered for some years after death, and Dan was essentially a human being, and Bridget was a human being. So why should I defraud them of an immortality opened up to them by a chance word spoken by Edward Martyn in his garret in Pump Court? If my cousins complain, I’ll answer them: We see things from different sides: you from a catholic, I from a literary. What a side of life to choose! I hear them saying, and myself answering: Dan’s love of Bridget was what was best in him, and what was most like him. It is in this preference that Dan is above you, for alone among you he sought beauty. Bridget was a pretty girl, and beauty in a woman is all that a man like Dan could be expected to seek. Whoever amongst you has bought an Impressionist picture or a Pre-Raphaelite picture let him first cast a stone. But not one of you ever bought any object because you thought it beautiful, so leave me to tell Dan’s story in my own way. His love of Bridget I hold in higher esteem than Mat’s desire, during the last ten years of his life, to buy himself a seat in Heaven in the front row, a desire which, by the way, cost him many hundreds a year.
At that moment a leaf floated down, and, forgetful of my tale, I looked up into the tree, admiring the smooth stem, the beautiful growth, the multitudinous leaves above me and the leaf in my hand. Enough light came through the branches for me to admire the pattern so wonderfully designed, and I said: How intense life seems here in this minute! Yet in a few years my life in the Temple will have passed, will have become as dim as those years of Dan’s life in Dunamon. But are these years dim or merely distant?
A carp splashed in the fountain basin. How foolish that fish would think me if he could think at all, wasting my time sitting here, thinking of Dan instead of going to bed! But being a human being, and not a carp, and Dan being a side of humanity which appealed to me, I continued to think of him and Bridget — dead days rising up in my mind one after the other. I had gone to Mayo to write A Mummer’s Wife, and Dan had lent me a riding-horse, a great black beast with no shoulders, but good enough to ride after a long morning’s work, and a rumour having reached me that something had gone wrong with one of his cracks, I rode over to Dunamon. The horse was restive and seventeen hands high, so I did not venture to dismount but halloed outside, and receiving no answer rode round to the stables, and inquired for the master of every stableman and jockey, without getting a satisfactory answer. Every one seemed reticent. The master had gone to Dublin, said one; another, slinking away, mentioned he was thinking of going, perhaps he had gone, and seeing they did not wish to answer me, I called to one, slung myself out of the saddle and walked into the kitchen.
Well, Bridget, how are you today?
Well, thank you, sir.
What’s this I’m hearing in the stables about the master going to Dublin?
Ah, you’ve been hearing that? and a smile lit up Bridget’s pretty eyes.
Isn’t it true? Bridget hesitated, and I added: Is it that he doesn’t want to see me?
Indeed, sir, he’s always glad to see you.
And my curiosity excited, I pressed her.
It’s just that he don’t want to be showing himself to everybody.
To deceive her my face assumed a grave air.
No trouble with the tenants, I hope? Nothing of that sort?
The people are quiet enough round here.
Well, Bridget, I’ve always thought you a pretty girl. Tell me, what has happened? And to lead her further I said: But you and the master are just as good friends as ever, aren’t you? Nothing to do with you, Bridget? I’d be sorry —
With me, sir? Sure, it isn’t from me he’d be hiding in the garden.
Unless, Bridget, he’s beginning to grow holy, like Mr Mat, who is a very holy man up in Dublin now, wearing a white beard, never going out except to chapel; far too repentant for the priest, who, it is said, would be glad to get rid of him.
How is that, sir?
He cries out in the middle of Mass that God may spare his soul, interrupting everybody else’s prayers. I never liked that sort of thing myself, Bridget, and have never understood how God could be pleased with a man for sending his children and their mother to America. You know of whom I’m talking?
Bridget did not answer for a while, and when I repeated my question she said:
Of course I do. Of Ellen Ford.
Yes, that is of whom I’m thinking.
And then, looking round to see if anybody was within hearing, she told me how two of Mr Mat’s sons had come back from America, bothering Mr Dan for their father’s address.
Two fine young fellows, the two of them as tall as Mr Mat himself.
And to escape from his nephews the master locks himself up in the garden? Excellent security in eighteen feet of a wall.
But didn’t they get into the trees — Mr Mat’s two big sons — and Mr Dan never suspecting it walked underneath them, and then it was that they gave him the length and breadth of their tongues, and the whole stable listening. The smile died out of her eyes, and fearing that one day her lot might be Ellen Ford’s, Bridget said: Wouldn’t it be more natural for Mr Mat to have married Ellen and made a good wife of her than sending her to America and her sons coming back to bother Mr Dan?
It was a cruel thing, Bridget.
That’s always the way, Bridget answered, and she moved a big saucepan from one side of the range to the other. You’ll find him in the garden if you knock three times.
I’ll go and fetch him presently.
Will you be staying to dinner, sir?
That depends on what you’re cooking.
A pair of boiled ducks today.
Boiled ducks!
Don’t you like them boiled? You won’t be saying anything against my cooking, if you stay to dinner, will you?
Not a word against your cooking. Excellent cooking, Bridget.
And as she busied herself about the range, thinking of the ducks boiling in the saucepan, or thinking of what her fate would be if Dan died before making a good wife of her, I studied the swing of her hips, still shapely, but at thirty a peasant’s figure begins to tell of the hard work she has done, and as she bent over the range I noticed that she wore a little more apron-string than she used to wear.
The return of Mat’s two sons from America seemed to have made her a little anxious about her own future. Any day, I said, another girl may be brought up from the village, and then Bridget will be seen less frequently upstairs. She’ll receive ten or twelve pounds a year for cleaning and cooking, and perhaps after a little while drift away like a piece of broken furniture into the outhouses. That will be her fate, unless she becomes my cousin, and the possibility of finding myself suddenly related to Bridget caused a little pensiveness to come into my walk. It was not necessary that Dan should marry her, but he should make her a handsome allowance if some years of damned hard luck on the turf should compel him to marry his neighbour’s daughter; enlarged suspensory ligaments have made many marriages in Mayo and Galway; and I went about the Temple remembering that when —— was going to marry —— , the bride’s relations had gathered round the fire to decide the fate of the peasant girl and her children. They were all at sixes and sevens until a pious old lady muttered: Let him emigrate them; whereupon they rubbed their shins complacently. But Bridget was not put away; Dan died in her arms. After that her story becomes legendary. It has been said that she remained at Dunamon, and washed and cooked and scrubbed for the next of kin, and wore her life away there as a humble servant at the smallest wage that could be offered to her. And it has been said that she made terms with the next of kin and got a co
nsiderable sum from him, and went to America and keeps a boarding-house in Chicago. And I have heard, too, that she ended her days in the workhouse, a little crumpled ruin, amid other ruins, every one with her own story.
Bridget is a type in the West of Ireland, and I have known so many that perhaps I am confusing one story with another. For the purpose of my book any one of these endings would do. The best would, perhaps, be a warm cottage, a pleasant thatch, a garden, hollyhocks, and bee-hives. In such a cottage I can see Bridget an old woman. But the end of a life is not a thing that can be settled at once, walking about in moonlight, for what seems true then may seem fictitious next day. And already Dan and Bridget had begun to seem a little too trite and respectable for my purpose. When he came to be written out Dan would differ little from the characters to be found in Lever and Lover. They would have served him up with the usual sauce, a sort of restaurant gravy which makes everything taste alike, whereas painted by me, Dan would get into something like reality, he would attain a certain dignity; but a rougher being would suit my purpose better, and I fell to thinking of one of Dan’s hirelings, Carmody, a poacher, the most notorious in Mayo and Galway, and so wary that he escaped convictions again and again; and when Dan appointed him as gamekeeper there was no further use to think about bringing him for trial, for wasn’t Dan on the Bench?
