Complete Works of George Moore, page 385
Amazed, Alice looked at her friend questioningly, for she had never heard her speak like this before. But Cecilia did not see her; the prominent eyes of the mystic were veiled with strange glamour, and, with divine gourmandise, she savoured the ineffable sweetness of the vision, and, after a long silence, she said:
‘I often wonder, Alice, how you can think as you do; and, strange to say, no one suspects you are an unbeliever; you’re so good in all except that one point.’
‘But surely, dear, it isn’t a merit to believe; it is hardly a thing that we can call into existence.’
‘You should pray for faith.’
‘I don’t see how I can pray if I haven’t faith.’
‘You’re too clever; but I would ask you, Alice — you never told me — did you never believe in God, I mean when you were a little child?’
‘I suppose I must have, but, as well as I can remember, it was only in a very half-hearted way. I could never quite bring myself to credit that there was a Being far away, sitting behind a cloud, who kept his eye on all the different worlds, and looked after them just as a stationmaster looks after the arrival and departure of trains from some great terminus.’
‘Alice! how can you talk so? Aren’t you afraid that something awful might happen to you for talking of the Creator of all things in that way?’
‘Why should I be afraid, and why should that Being, if he exists, be angry with me for my sincerity? If he be all-powerful, it rests with himself to make me believe.’
They had now accomplished the greater part of their journey, and, a little tired, had sat down to rest on a portion of a tree left by the woodcutters. Gold rays slanted through the glades, enveloping and rounding off the tall smooth trunks that rose branchless to a height of thirty, even forty, feet; and the pink clouds, seen through the arching dome of green, were vague as the picture on some dim cathedral-roof.
‘In places like these, I wonder you don’t feel God’s presence.’
‘On the contrary, the charm of nature is broken when we introduce a ruling official.’
‘Alice! how can you — you who are so good — speak in that way?’ At that moment a dead leaf rustled through the silence— ‘And do you think that we shall die like that leaf? That, like it, we shall become a part of the earth and be forgotten as utterly?’
‘I am afraid I do. That dead, fluttering thing was once a bud; it lived the summer-life of a leaf; now it will decay through the winter, and perhaps the next, until it finally becomes part of the earth. Everything in nature I see pursuing the same course; why should I imagine myself an exception to the general rule?’
‘What, then, is the meaning of life?’
‘That I’m afraid we shall never learn from listening to the rustling of leaves.’
The short sharp cry of a bird broke the mild calm of the woods, and Alice said:
‘Perhaps the same thought that troubles us is troubling that bird.’
The girls walked on in silence, and when they came to the end of the path and their parting was inevitable, there was something of the passion of the lover in Cecilia’s voice: ‘Promise me you will come to see me soon again. You’ll not leave me so long; you will write; I shall not be able to live if I don’t hear from you.’
The sound of hooves was heard, and a pair of cream-coloured ponies, with a florid woman driving determinedly, came sweeping round the corner.
‘What a strange person!’ said Alice, watching the blue veil and the brightly dyed hair.
‘Don’t you know who she is?’ said Cecilia; ‘that is your neighbour, Mrs. Lawler.’
‘Oh! is it really? I have been so long at school that I know nobody — I have been anxious to see her. Why, I wonder, do people speak of her so mysteriously?’
‘You must have heard that she isn’t visited?’
‘Well, yes; but I didn’t quite understand. Your father was saying something the other day about Mr. Lawler’s shooting-parties; then mamma looked at him; he laughed and spoke of “les colombes de Cythère.” I intended to ask mamma what he meant, but somehow I forgot.’
‘She was one of those women that walk about the streets by night.’
‘Oh! really!’ said Alice; and the conversation came to a sudden pause. They had never spoken upon such a subject before, and the presence of the deformed girl rendered it a doubly painful one. In her embarrassment, Alice said:
‘Then I wonder Mr. Lawler married her. Was it his fault that—’
‘Oh! I don’t think so,’ Cecilia replied, scornfully: ‘but what does it matter? — she was quite good enough for him.’
At every moment a new Cecilia was revealing herself, the existence of whom Alice had not even suspected in the old; and as she hurried home she wondered if the minds of the other girls were the same as they were at school. Olive? She could see but little change in her sister; and May she had scarcely spoken to since they left school; Violet she hadn’t met since they parted at Athenry for their different homes. But Cecilia — She entered the house still thinking of her, and heard Olive telling her mother that Captain Hibbert had admired her new hat.
‘He told me that I’d be the handsomest girl at the Drawing-Room.’
‘And what did you say, dear?’
‘I asked him how he knew. Was that right?’
‘Quite right; and what did he say then?’
‘He said, because he had never seen anybody so handsome, and as he had seen everybody in London, he supposed — I forget the exact words, but they were very nice; I am sure he admired my new hat; but you — you haven’t told me how you liked it. Do you think I should wear it down on my eyes, or a bit back?’
‘I think it very becoming as it is; but tell me more about Captain Hibbert.’
‘He told me he was coming to meet us at Mass. You know he is a Roman Catholic?’
‘I know he is, dear, and am very glad.’
‘If he weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to meet us at Mass.’
VIII
ACCORDING TO OLD-ESTABLISHED custom, on the arrival of his family Arthur had turned his nudities to the wall, and now sitting, one leg tucked under him, on the sofa, throwing back from time to time his long blond locks, he hummed an Italian air.
‘How tired you look, Alice dear! Will you have a cup of tea? It will freshen you up; you have been walking yourself to death.’
‘Thanks, mamma, I will have a cup of tea; Cecilia and I went to see the Brennans.’
‘And are any of them going to be married yet?’ said Olive.
‘I really don’t know; I didn’t ask them.’
‘Well, they ought to be doing something with themselves; they have been trying it on long enough. They have been going up to the Shelbourne for the last ten years. Did they show you the dresses they brought down this season? They haven’t worn them yet — they keep them wrapped up in silver paper.’
‘And how did you hear all that?’ she asked.
‘Oh, one hears everything! I don’t live with my nose buried in a book like you. That was all very well in the convent.’
‘But what have I done that you should speak to me in that way?’
‘Now, Alice dear,’ said Mrs. Barton coaxingly, ‘don’t get angry. I assure you Olive means nothing.’
‘No, indeed, I didn’t!’ Olive exclaimed, and she forced her sister back into the chair.
Arthur’s attention had been too deeply absorbed in the serenade in Don Pasquale to give heed to the feminine bickering with which his studio was ringing, until he was startled suddenly from his musical dreaming by an angry exclamation from his wife.
The picture of the bathers, which Alice had seen begun, had been only partially turned to the wall, and, after examining it for a few moments, Mrs. Barton got up and turned the picture round. The two naked creatures who were taking a dip in the quiet, sunlit pool were Olive and Mrs. Barton; and so grotesque were the likenesses that Alice could not refrain from laughing.
‘This is monstrous! This is disgraceful, sir! How often have I forbidden you to paint my face on any of your shameless pictures? And your daughter, too — and just as she is coming out! Do you want to ruin us? I should like to know what anyone would think if—’ And, unable to complete her sentence, either mentally or aloud, Mrs. Barton wheeled the easel, on which a large picture stood, into the full light of the window.
If Arthur had wounded the susceptibilities of his family before, he had outraged them now. The great woman, who had gathered to her bosom one of the doves her naked son, Cupid, had shot out of the trees with his bow and arrow, was Olive. The white face and its high nose, beautiful as a head by Canova is beautiful; the corn-like tresses, piled on the top of the absurdly small head, were, beyond mistaking, Olive. Mrs. Barton stammered for words; Olive burst into tears.
‘Oh, papa! how could you disgrace me in that way? Oh, I am disgraced! There’s no use in my going to the Drawing-Room now.’
‘My dear, my dear, I assure you I can change it with a flick of the brush. Admiration carried away by idea. I promise you I’ll change it.’
‘Come away. Olive — come away!’ said Mrs. Barton, casting a look of burning indignation at her husband. ‘If you cry like that, Olive, you won’t be fit to be looked at, and Captain Hibbert is coming here to-night.’
When they had left the room Arthur looked inquiringly at Alice.
‘This is very disagreeable,’ he said; ‘I really didn’t think the likeness was so marked as all that; I assure you I didn’t. I must do something to alter it — I might change the colour of the hair; but no, I can’t do that, the entire scheme of colour depends upon that. It is a great pity, for it is one of my best things; the features I might alter, and yet it is very hard to do so, without losing the character. I wonder if I were to make the nose straighter. Alice, dear, would you mind turning your head this way?’
‘Oh! no, no, no, papa dear! You aren’t going to put my face upon it!’ And she ran from the room smothered with laughter.
When this little quarrel was over and done, and Olive had ceased to consider herself a disgraced girl, the allusion that had been made to Mass as a means of meeting Captain Hibbert remained like a sting in Alice’s memory. It surprised her at all sorts of odd moments, and often forced her, under many different impulses of mind, to reconsider the religious problem more passionately and intensely than she had ever done before. She asked herself if she had ever believed? Perhaps in very early youth, in a sort of vague, half-hearted way, she had taken for granted the usual traditional ideas of heaven and hell, but even then, she remembered, she used to wonder how it was that time was found for everything else but God. If He existed, it seemed to her that monks and nuns, or puritans of the sternest type, were alone in the right. And yet she couldn’t quite feel that they were right. She had always been intensely conscious of the grotesque contrast between a creed like that of the Christian, and having dancing and French lessons, and going to garden-parties — yes, and making wreaths and decorations for churches at Christmas-time. If one only believed, and had but a shilling, surely the only logical way of spending it was to give it to the poor, or a missionary — and yet nobody seemed to think so. Priests and bishops did not do so, she herself did not want to do so; still, so long as Alice believed, she was unable to get rid of the idea. Teachers might say what they pleased, but the creed they taught spoke for itself, and prescribed an impossible ideal — an unsatisfactory ideal which aspired to no more than saving oneself after all.
Lies and all kinds of subterfuge were strictly against her character. But it was impossible for her to do or say anything when by so doing she knew she might cause suffering or give pain to anyone, even an enemy; and this defect in her character forced her to live up to what she deemed a lie. She had longed to tell the truth and thereby be saved the mummery of attending at Mass; but when she realized the consternation, the agony of mind, it would cause the nuns she loved, she held back the word. But since she had left the convent she had begun to feel that her life must correspond to her ideas and she had determined to speak to her mother on this (for her) all-important subject — the conformity of her outer life to her inner life. The power to prevail upon herself to do what she thought wrong merely because she did not wish to wound other people’s feelings was dying in her. Sooner or later she would have to break away; and as the hour approached when they should go to Mass to meet Captain Hibbert, the desire to be allowed to stay away became almost irresistible; and at the last moment it was only a foolish fear that such a declaration might interfere with her sister’s prospects that stayed the words as they rose to her lips. She picked up her gloves, and a moment after found herself in the brougham — packed into it, watching the expressionless church-going faces of her family.
From afar the clanging of a high-swinging bell was heard, and the harsh reverberations, travelling over the rocky town-lands, summoned the cottagers to God. The peasants stepped aside to let the carriage pass. Peasants and landlords were going to worship in the same chapel, but it would seem from the proclamations pasted on the gate-posts that the house of prayer had gone over into the possession of the tenantry.
‘Now, Arthur — do you hear? — you mustn’t look at those horrid papers!’ Mrs. Barton whispered to her husband. ‘We must pretend not to see them. I wonder how Father Shannon can allow such a thing, making the house of God into — into I don’t know what, for the purpose of preaching robbery and murder. Just look at the country-people — how sour and wicked they look! Don’t they, Alice?’
‘Goodness me!’ said Olive, ‘who in the world can those people be in our pew?’
Mrs. Barton trembled a little. Had the peasants seized the religious possessions of their oppressors? Dismissing the suspicion, she examined the backs indicated by Olive.
‘Why, my dear, it is the Goulds; what can have brought them all this way?’
The expected boredom of the service was forgotten, and Olive shook hands warmly with Mrs. Gould and May.
‘Why, you must have driven fifteen miles; where are your horses?’
‘We took the liberty of sending the carriage on to Brookfield, and we are coming on to lunch with you — that is to say, if you will let us?’ cried May.
‘Of course, of course; but how nice of you!’
‘Oh! we have such news; but it was courageous of us to come all this way. Have you seen those terrible proclamations?’
‘Indeed we have. Just fancy a priest allowing his chapel to be turned into a political — political what shall I call it?’
‘Bear-garden,’ suggested May.
‘And Father Shannon is going to take the chair at the meeting; he wouldn’t get his dues if he didn’t.’
‘Hush, hush! they may hear you; but you were saying something about news.’
‘Oh! don’t ask me,’ said Mrs. Gould; ‘that’s May’s affair — such work!’
‘Say quickly! what is it, May?’
‘Look here, girls, I can’t explain everything now; but we are going to give a ball — that is to say, all the young girls are going to subscribe. It will only cost us about three pounds apiece — that is to say, if we can get forty subscribers; we have got twenty already, and we hope you will join us. It is going to be called the Spinsters’ Ball. But there is such a lot to be done: the supper to be got together, the decorations of the room — splendid room, the old schoolhouse, you know. We are going to ask you to let us take Alice away with us.’
The conversation was here interrupted by the appearance of the priest, a large fat man, whose new, thick-soled boots creaked as he ascended the steps of the altar. He was preceded by two boys dressed in white and black surplices, who rang little brass bells furiously; a great trampling of feet was heard, and the peasants came into the church, coughing and grunting with monotonous, animal-like voices; and the sour odour of cabin-smoked frieze arose — it was almost visible in the great beams of light that poured through the eastern windows; whiffs of unclean leather, mingled with a smell of a sick child; and Olive and May, exchanging looks of disgust, drew forth cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, and in unison the perfumes of white rose and eau d’opoponax evaporated softly.
Just behind Alice a man groaned and cleared his throat with loud guffaws; she listened to hear the saliva fall: it splashed on the earthen floor. Farther away a circle of dried and yellowing faces bespoke centuries of damp cabins; they moaned and sighed, a prey to the gross superstition of the moment. One man, bent double, beat a ragged shirt with a clenched fist; the women of forty, with cloaks drawn over their foreheads and trailing on the ground in long black folds, crouched until only the lean, hard-worked hands that held the rosary were seen over the bench-rail.
The sermon came in the middle of Mass, and was a violent denunciation of the Ladies Cullen, who, it was stated, had pursued one poor boy until he took refuge in an empty house, the door of which he was fortunately enabled to fasten against them; they had sent a sick woman blankets, in which they had not neglected to enclose some tracts; amateur shopkeeping, winter clothing, wood, turf, presents of meal, wine, and potatoes were all vigorously attacked as the wiles of the Evil One to lead the faithful from the true Church.
IX
AS THEY RETURNED from church, a horseman was seen riding rapidly towards them. It was Captain Hibbert. The movement of his shoulders, as he reined in his mettlesome bay, was picturesque, and he was coaxingly and gushingly upbraided for neglect of his religious duties.
