Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “Oh! how nice you look!”

  Nothing perhaps is diviner than the emotion which calls from us praise of things wholly different from ourselves. So far is it removed from sense, so closely allied is it to the brain, that it becomes the calm will-less knowledge that Schopenhauer holds up to us as the highest ideal to be attained. And to this round, soft-limbed girl, whose white flesh burned and was alive with the wants of the flesh, there was in Alice’s candid eyes — revealing as they did her natural powerlessness to do aught but live up to the practical rectitudes of life, as she conceived them to exist — that charm, that assuagement, that vision of purity, that elevation which the Catholic draws from his God-crowned altar, which the traveller breathes when, as Wordsworth expresses it, the “shades of evening.... connect the landscape to the quiet of the sky.” There is always a close and intimate, though not always an obvious analogy, between our mental and physical characteristics. It, however, was very apparent in the present instances. The soft, the melting the almost fluid eyes, the bosom large and just a little falling, the full hips, the absence of any marked point or line, the rolling roundness of every part of the body definitely announced a want of fixed principle, and a somewhat gross and sensual temperament; whereas the bright, affectionate, but slightly hard eyes, the thin arms and straight hips and shoulders, were admirably suggestive of the clear, the fixed, the almost stern mind; yes, a mind so well ordered that it could, and did, exclude all thoughts to which it could not at once accord a frank welcome.

  “If you don’t ‘mash’ Mr. Harding to-night, he will be a tough one indeed. Did I tell you I was talking to him yesterday in the ladies’ drawing-room — he is very nice, but I can’t quite make him out: I think he despises us all; all but you; about you he said all kinds of nice things: that you were so clever, and nice, and amusing. And tell me, dear,” said May, in her warm, affectionate way, “do you really like him — you know what I mean?”

  May’s eyes and voice were so full of significance, that to pretend to misunderstand was impossible; and a hot feeling of resentment, almost of disgust, filled Alice’s thoughts; but mastering it, she said as quietly as she could:

  “I like Mr. Harding well enough. It is very nice to have him to talk to. To spend hour after hour listening to the crowd of ignorant gossiping women who live here is too dreadful. I am sure I don’t want to run down my own sex — there are plenty only too anxious to do that — but I am afraid that there is not a girl in Dublin who thinks of anything except how she is to get married.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said May, a little offended. “I suppose if you think of a man at all, you think of how ho likes you.”

  The defiant tone in which these words were spoken was surprising; and, for a moment, Alice stood staring blankly at this superb cream-fleshed girl — superb in her dress of cream faille, her sensual beauty poetised by the long veils which hung like gossamer-webs from the coils of her copper-gleaming hair.

  “I am afraid, May,” she said, “that you think a great deal too much of such things. I don’t say anything against Mr. Scully, but I think it right to tell you that he is considered a very dangerous young man; and I am sure it does a girl no good to be seen with him. It was he who.. — . — .”

  “Now I will not hear you abuse Fred,” cried May. “We are great friends; I like you better than any other girl, and if you value our friendship you will not speak to me again like this. I would not put up with it, no, not from my own mother.”

  The girl moved hastily towards the door, but Alice laid her hand on her arm, saying:

  “You must not be angry, May; perhaps you are right; I should not have meddled in things that do not concern me; but then we have been so long friends that I could not help.. — . — .”

  “I know, I know,” said the girl yielding at once to the subtle cerebral charm that Alice’s mien and motions so constantly brought into play. “You were speaking only for my good; but if you are friends with a person you can’t stand by and hear them abused. I know people speak badly of Fred; but then people are so jealous — and they are all jealous of Fred.”

  Then the conversation came to a pause, and the girls examined each other’s dresses. At the end of a long silence May said:

  “What an extraordinary thing this Drawing-room is when one comes to think of it. Just fancy going to all this expense to be kissed by the Lord-Lieutenant: a man one never saw before. Will you feel ashamed when he kisses you?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I have thought much about it,” said Alice, laughing. “I suppose it docs not matter, it is only a ceremony, not a real kiss.”

  At this moment Mrs. Barton’s voice was heard, calling— “Now, Alice, Alice, where are you? We are waiting for you — make haste, for goodness’ sake; we are very late as it is.”

  Staircase and corridor were empty and silent. The trail of a sachet-scented petticoat could be detected on this length of Brussels carpet, the acrid vulgarity of eau de Cologne hung like a curtain before an open door, a vision of white silk gleamed for a moment as it fled from room to room: men in a strange garb — black velvet and steel buttons — furtively hurried away, tripping over their swords, and ashamed of their stockinged calves. On the first landing, about the winter-garden, a crowd of German waiters, housemaids, — billiard-players, with cigars in their teeth and cues in their hands, had collected; underneath, in the hall, the barmaids, and old ladies, wrapped up in rugs and shawls to save them from the terrible draughts, were criticising the dresses. Olive’s name was on every lip, and to see her all were breathless with expectation; her matrimonial prospects were discussed; and Lord Kilcarney was openly spoken of. “Ah! here she is, there she is!” was whispered. The head-porter, wild with excitement, shouted for Mrs. Barton’s carriage; three under-porters distended huge umbrellas; the door was opened, an immense wind tore through the hall, sending the old ladies flying back to them sitting-room, and the Bartons, holding their hair and their trains, rushed across the wet pavement and took refuge in the brougham.

  “Did one ever see such weather?” said Mrs. Barton. “I hope your hair isn’t ruffled, Olive?”

  “No, mamma, I think it is all right.”

  Reassured, Mrs. Barton continued:— “I don’t think there ever was a country so hateful as Ireland. What with rain and Land League. I wonder why we live here! Did you notice the time, Alice, as we left the hotel?”

  “Yes, mamma; it was twenty-five minutes to ten.”

  “Oh! we are very late; we shan’t be there before ten. The thing to do is to get there about half-past nine; the Drawingroom does not begin before eleven; but if you can get into the first lot you can stand at the entrance of Patrick’s Hall, and have the pick of the men as they come through. That’s the place to stand; all the Dublin girls know that trick — I’ll show you when we arrive. And you, Alice, I see your friend Harding is going to the Drawing-room. Now, if you do what I tell you, you won’t miss him; and I do hope you won’t, for to have you hanging about my skirts the whole evening: and it does look so bad to see a girl alone, just as if she were unable to get a man.”

  While Mrs. Barton continued to advise her girls, the carriage rolled rapidly along Stephen’s Green. It had now turned into Grafton Street; and on the steep, rain-flooded asphalte, they narrowly escaped an accident. The coachman, however, steadied his horses, and soon the long colonnades of the Bank of Ireland were seen on the left. From this point they were no longer alone, and except when a crash of thunder drowned every other sound, the rattling of wheels was heard behind and in front of them. Carriages came from every side: the night was alive with flashing lamps; a glimpse of white fur or silk, the red-breast of a uniform, the gold of an epaulette, were seen, and then lost a moment after in the devouring darkness. Thinking of the block that would take place on the quays, the coachmen whipped up their horses; but soon the ordering voices of the mantled and mounted policemen were heard, and the carriages came to a full stop.

  “We are very late; hundreds
will pass before us,” said Mrs. Barton, despairingly, as she watched the lines of silkladen carriages that seemed to be passing them by. But it was difficult to make sure of anything; and fearful of soiling their gloves they refrained from touching the breath-misted windows. On the glazed roof the rain pattered madly.

  “Did you ever see such a pack of women; there seems to be nothing else; it wouldn’t be a bad joke if half of them took the wrong turning and drove into the river instead of going to the Castle — and for all they’ll get there!”

  Olive laughed with her usual facile lightness, then the three women screamed — and for one electric instant the city appeared in hideous silhouette upon a chalky-white sky. A narrow drain-like river wedged between high-stone embankments; right along in a slight curve the perspective floats, and a few factory chimneys close a sinister horizon of whiskey and beer. On the left is squalor multiform and terrible. The plaster, in huge scabs falls from the walls, and the flaring light of a tallow candle reveals a dismantled room. You see a huge shouldered mother, a lean-faced crone, and a squatting tailor that poverty chains till midnight to his work-board; you see a couple of coarse girls, maids of all work, who smile and call to the dripping coachmen on the boxes; and there are low shops filled with cheap cigars and tobacco, shops where old clothes rot in fetid confusion, shops exhaling the rancid odours of decaying vegetables, shops dingy with rusting iron and cracked china, shops that traffic in obscene goods and prints; shops and streets that are but a leer of malign decrepitude. And as you near the Castle the traces of the destroyer become more apparent — more foul. Beneath the upas tree the city, even to her remotest suburb, has withered; but that in the immediate shadow — Ship Street — was black, plague-spotted, pestilential, and, as a corpse, quick with the life of the worm.

  Not withstanding the terrible weather the streets were lined with vagrants, patriots, waifs, idlers of all sorts and kinds. Plenty of girls of sixteen and eighteen come out to see the “finery.” Poor little things in battered bonnets and draggled skirts, who would dream upon ten shillings a week; a drunken mother striving to hush a child that dies beneath a dripping shawl; a harlot embittered by feelings of commercial resentment; troops of labourers battered and bruised with toil: you see their hang-dog faces, their thin coats, their shirts torn and revealing the beast-like hair on their chests; you see also the Irish-Americans, with their sinister faces, and broad-brimmed hats, standing scowling beneath the pale flickering gas-lamps, and, when the block brought the carriages to a standstill, sometimes no more than a foot of space separated their occupants from the crowd on the pavement’s edge. Never were poverty and wealth brought into plainer proximity. In the broad glare of the carriage lights the shape of every feature, even the colour of the eyes, every glance, every detail of dress, every stain of misery were revealed to the silken exquisites who, a little frightened, strove to hide themselves within the scented shadows of their broughams: and in like manner, the bloom on every aristocratic cheek, the glitter of every diamond, the richness of every plume were visible to the avid eyes of those who stood without in the wet and the cold.

  “I wish they would not stare so,” said Mrs. Barton; “one would think they were a lot of hungry children looking into a sweetmeat shop. The police ought really to prevent it.”

  “And how wicked those men in the big hats look,” said Olive, “I’m sure they would rob us if they only dared.”

  Alice thought of the Galway ball, with the terrible faces looking in at the window.

  The garish lightning again illumined the sky, and showed the steps and the columns of a church crowded with huddled groups, and single climbing figures. The thunder rattled with a volubility so terrible that it seemed as if the heavens were speaking for the freedom-dreaming nation, now goaded and gagged with Coercion Bills. On and on the carriages rolled, now blocked under the black rain-dripping archway of the Castle yard, now delayed as they laboriously made the tour of the quadrangle. Olive doubted if her turn would ever come; but, by slow degrees, each carriage discharged its cargo of silk, and at last Mrs. Barton and her daughters found themselves in the vestibule, taking numbers for their wraps at the cloak-rooms placed on either side of the stairway.

  The slender figures ascending to tiny naked shoulders, presented a piquant contrast with the huge, black Assyrian bull-like policemen, who, guarded the passage, and reduced, by contrast, to almost doll-like proportions the white creatures who went up the great stairway. Overhead an artificial plant, some twenty feet wide, spread a decorative greenness; the walls were lined with rifles; and at regular intervals, in lieu of pictures, were set stars made out of swords. There were also three suits of plate armour; and the grinning of the helmets of old time contrasted with the bearskin shrouded faces of the red guardsmen. And through all this military display the white ware tripped to the great muslin market. The air was agleam with diamonds, pearls, skin, and tulle veils. Powdered and purple-coated footmen stood, splendid in the splendour of pink calves and salmon-coloured breeches, on every landing; and as the white mass of silk pushed along the white-painted corridor, the sense of ceremony that had till then oppressed it, evaporated in the fumes of the blazing gas.

  But the battle for existence did not really begin until the blue drawing-room was reached. There heat and fatigue soon put an end to all coquetting between the sexes. The beautiful silks were hidden by the crowd; only the shoulders remained, and, to appease their terrible ennui, the men gazed down the backs of the women’s dresses stupidly. Shoulders were there, of all tints and shapes. Indeed, it was like a vast rosary, alive with white, pink, and cream-coloured flowers: of Maréchal Niels, Souvenir de Malmaisons, Mademoiselle Eugène Verdiers, Aimée Vibert Scandens. Sweetly turned, adolescent shoulders, blush white, smooth and even as the petals of a Marquiso Mortemarle; the strong, commonly turned shoulders, abundant and free as the fresh rosy pink of the Anna Alinuff; the drooping white shoulders, full of falling contours as a pale Madame Lacharine; the chlorotic shoulders, deadly white, of the almost greenish shade that is found in a Princess Clementine; the pert, the dainty little shoulders, filled with warm pink shadows, pretty and compact as Countess Cecile de Chabrillant; the large heavy shoulders full of vulgar madder tints, coarse, strawberry colour, enormous as a Paul Neron; clustering white shoulders, grouped like the blossoms of an Aimée Vibert Scandens, and, just in front of me, under my eyes, the flowery, the voluptuous, the statuesque shoulders of a tall blonde woman of thirty, whose flesh is full of the exquisite peach-like tones of a Mademoiselle Eugène Verdier, blooming in all its pride of summer loveliness.

  To make way for this enormous crowd, the Louis XV. sofas and armchairs had been pushed against the walls. Large blue fans outspread ornamented every corner. Chandeliers of exquisite fragility, covered with crystal balls, hung against the blue silk curtains, with which the long line of windows on the right were draped; and in the gold mirrors on the left, all rutilant with quick flames, and the white slimnesses of the wax candles, a blurred and grotesque picture of the flesh-flowers below was reflected.

  An hour passed wearily, and in this beautiful drawing-room humanity suffered in all its natural impudence. Momentarily the air grew hotter and more silicious; the brain ached with the dusty odour of poudre de ris, and the many acidities of evaporating perfume; the sugary sweetness of the blondes, the salt flavours of the brunettes, and this allegro movement of odours was interrupted suddenly by the garlicky andante, deep as the pedal notes of an organ, that the perspiring arms of a fat chaperon slowly exhaled.

  At last there was a move forwards, and a sigh of relief, a grunt of satisfaction, broke from the oppressed creatures: but a line of guardsmen was pressing from behind, and the women were thrown hither and thither into the arms and on to the backs of soldiers, police officers, county inspectors and castle underlings. Now a lady turns pale, and whispers to her husband that she is going to faint; now a young girl’s petticoats have become entangled in the moving mass of legs! She cries aloud for help: her brother
expostulates with those around. He is scarcely heeded.

  The heart sickens in the crush. How curious the faces seem! Here are a few silhouettes. Look at the tall woman of fifty with a hooked-nose and orange hair; she peeps over that shoulder and tries to keep within view of her daughter; next to her is a fat man with an eyebrow and an eyeglass; there is a waistless lady with red hair; her daughter — a tiny thing — has inherited the mother’s red hair. A little to the right is a bald head that the heat has turned to crimson; and you see the sallow man with the foxy beard, and the tiny little old woman, who looks as if she were down a well, so entirely is she lost between four tall men; you see that male profile? how distinct it comes out against the pillar! By your side a weak girl is being driven along by a couple of police officers: very pitifully she holds up her train with both hands.

  But the struggle grows still more violent when it becomes evident that the guardsmen are about to bring down the bar and stop further exit; and begging a florid-faced attorney to unloose his sword, which had become entangled in her dress, Mrs. Barton called on her daughter, and slipping under the raised arms, they found themselves suddenly in a square, sombre room, full of a rich, brown twilight. In one corner there was a bureau, where an attendant served out blank cards; in another the white plumes nodded against the red glare that came from the throne-room, whence Liddell’s band was heard playing waltz tunes, and the stentorian tones of the chamberlain’s voice called the ladies’ names.

  “Have you got your cards?” said Mrs. Barton.

  “I have got mine,” said Olive.