Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  I was to pray for him in return.

  And did you go to meet him, Sarah?

  No, sir; for the next time Phyllis saw him he said that Phyllis’s word was good enough for him and that he’d give her the money, taking in return for it my promise to pray for him. Tell him, I said to Phyllis, that I will never cease to pray for him and for you, too, dear Phyllis, though indeed it should be you to pray for me, so much does it seem that I’m the wicked one. And we spoke of the wages of sin. But Phyllis said: Dear, you wouldn’t do it well; you’re not suited to the life. It’s well that you didn’t. —

  She seems to be a very good girl, your Phyllis, the doctor said.

  Yes, Phyllis is a good girl. There never was a better one, so good that it seemed to me, as I was saying, sir, that I was the wicked girl and Phyllis the good one. But that couldn’t be, for the Church says different. Then I seemed to understand that every day I stayed in Dublin I was putting Phyllis into sins that she wouldn’t commit if I wasn’t with her. The night she went out to meet the gentleman again I prayed for them both all the time, and the money seemed hateful money she brought back. But there it was; it was earned, it was gotten, it would have to be spent, and it was better it should be spent on a good purpose than on a bad, so it seemed to me; and the next day we bought the clothes. Father Roland wrote to the nuns. A telegram came, and we went down to the boat together, crying all the way, for we were very sorry to part. Sir, I don’t think I can go on telling you. It broke my heart to part with that girl; she’d been so good to me and we were such friends, and there was nothing for it now but we be to part for ever. I felt I was never going to see her again, and I think she felt the same about me.

  Have you never tried to find her, Sarah?

  Oh, sir, all my evenings out have been spent hunting for her round Merrion Square and round about College Green, up Sackville Street as far as the Rotunda, looking for her in the crowd. Now and again it seemed to me that I saw somebody like her, and I ran and looked into her face, but it was not Phyllis. I can’t go on telling you the story, sir. I can’t, indeed I can’t. She laid her face in her hands and fell across the doctor’s writing-table, her sobs alarming him, the big tears rolling from her eyelids down her swollen cheeks, even to her chin. If anybody were to call! The doctor waited, saying nothing, relying on silence to calm the girl’s grief. At last he said: Let me hear the rest of the story. You went on board the boat and arrived at the convent — when?

  In the late afternoon, sir, towards evening. I don’t think I can tell you any more of it.

  Yes, you can, Sarah. I cannot tell you whether you are to stay or go till I’ve heard the end.

  Well, I don’t know that there’s much more to tell, sir. You can guess the rest, that I was very miserable at leaving Phyllis, and felt more and more as time went on that in God’s sight there could not be much to choose between us, and at last I went with my story to the Mother Prioress.

  To the Mother Prioress! the doctor repeated.

  You see, I wanted to leave the convent and go back to Phyllis and tell her that I’d lead her life. In great grief one hasn’t one’s right thoughts. And when I came to the Prioress to tell her that I wasn’t happy and what I had left behind, she said: My child, you can’t go to a life of sin. Well, what can I do? I asked her, and she told me that there was one remedy for it all, and that was prayer. You see, she said, you are without money, without friends; you can’t save Phyllis from the life she is leading, but you can pray for her. All things are in the hands of God; he alone can help. So I took the Prioress’s advice and prayed.... After a time I was a postulant and then a novice, and when I had taken the final vows I seemed stronger. But there was always in my heart the pain that I had left Phyllis to a life of sin and gone away myself to a life of comfort and ease, with the hope of heaven at the end. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and I wouldn’t have been able to bear it if it hadn’t been for the Mother Prioress, who was very good to me and understood that the lay sisters had as much right to hear Mass as the choir sisters. But her time came, as it will come to all of us, and the Prioress that came after her was quite different from the one that had gone.

  It was she who turned you out of the convent, wasn’t it? Sarah answered: Yes, sir, and continued her story drearily, telling that several lay sisters in the convent had died, and that many of those who remained were old women who had come to the end of their time, infirm, bed ridden women: We had to attend on them in their cells and wheel them up and down the Broad Walk when there was a little sun. These old sisters were a great burden on the funds of the convent; I think the choir sisters felt it. And then two lay sisters died, young women who were not strong enough for the work. That was about three years ago, sir. So the convent was short of workers, and the choir sisters had to shift for themselves, and not being used to work they soon tired. So the Mother Prioress wrote to all the priests she knew for postulants, but the ones that answered her letters wanted to be choir sisters; none of them had fortunes, and the convent couldn’t afford to take them without. So all the work fell upon us, and many days we didn’t even get Mass. There was no time for private prayer; it was drudge, drudge, all the day, and if half an hour or ten minutes did come, I was too tired to pray and there seemed to be no hope for me to make up my arrears. My health, too, began to fail, and I was distracted by thoughts that I was failing in my duty towards Phyllis. The Prioress had told me I could only help Phyllis by my prayers, and in the last years there was no time. And what with bad health and thinking that I was remiss in my duty towards her and the man who had given me the money, one of the big dishes dropped out of my hand one day in the kitchen. The noise and the clatter of the pieces brought in the Sub-Prioress, who told me I wasn’t worth my keep. I didn’t answer her, but she brought the Prioress to see the kitchen, and everything was found fault with: it wasn’t swept, and the crockery was chipped and broken — all through my carelessness. I don’t know what they didn’t find fault with that day, and they thrieped on me till at the last the blood went to my head and I spoke without knowing what I was saying, telling them that while they were walking idly in the garden we were working our lives away. Yes, I think I said that two nuns had died already of hard work and bad food, and that we had no time for prayer; that the nunnery was no house of prayer but just a sweaters’ den, and that Pd sooner go back to a biscuit factory, where at all events I had the evenings to myself for prayer. I said many wrong things, but however wrong I was the Prioress shouldn’t have turned me out of the convent after ten years of work. I stood up for her when I came here first, sir, when you spoke against her; but perhaps I am wrong now and was right then. And now you have had the whole story.

  Not all the story, Sarah.

  Well, I know no more of it, sir.

  You have not told me why you’re leaving my service.

  My duty is towards Phyllis, sir; I have promised her my prayers, and there’s the man that paid for me, too, to be considered. If I married I would be having children and I’d have to look after them, and Phyllis would be forgotten; I couldn’t be remembering her always except in a convent You’ve never told me, Sarah, how you met Miss Lynch. You must have met her the day you arrived in Dublin.

  No, sir; it was the next day. I arrived in Dublin late in the evening, and after walking about Sackville Street, Bond Street, and round Trinity College, searching for Phyllis —

  But you were ten years in the Welsh convent, and in ten years —

  She may have married; she always looked to marry, I know that, but being in Dublin I had to look, for one never knows. I was just back where I was before, with this difference, that I had a sovereign. The nuns at the last moment said they’d let me have that much —

  For ten years’ work! chimed in Dr. O’Reardon, but without noticing the interruption Sarah continued:

  It was all over again what it was before, myself asking the policeman to direct me, and when he heard I had money he said there was a woman in the street he lived in w
ho would take me in. He directed me. There was in her house a child put out to nurse —

  And Miss Lynch being a Health Inspector! said the doctor. I see it all!

  But I wouldn’t want you to think ill of the Welsh nuns, sir. You see, it was hard for them to keep me and I after saying to the Prioress that she was answerable for the lives of the lay sisters, and much of that sort. They couldn’t have kept me, and I have reason to think they have suffered in their consciences ever since, for when I wrote to them to tell them where I was and that I’d like to enter another convent if they’d give me a brief, they wrote, leaving out many of the bad things I’d said, for they were in the wrong too themselves, and they felt it, I’m sure of it. I am leaving you, sir, with sorrow in my heart, for I cannot find Phyllis, though I have looked everywhere for her.

  Phyllis may be dead.

  Even so, sir, I must pray for her; we must pray for the dead. I know you Protestants don’t, but we Catholics do. And I hope you’ll forgive me, sir, if I’ve deceived you in anything, an’ indeed I have that, for I only came into your service to earn enough money —

  To go into another convent, the doctor interrupted.

  Yes; that was at the back of my mind always.

  Well, if that be your conviction, Sarah, you must go.

  Now will it be putting you to an inconvenience if I don’t stay my month?

  It will, Sarah, but I haven’t the heart to detain you. Peace of mind comes before everything else; and I dare say that I shall be able to get another parlourmaid within the next three days. And we part then, Sarah, for eternity.

  Not for eternity, sir. We shall all meet in heaven, Catholics and Protestants alike.

  And what about the broken-hearted man on the ladder clipping the ivy on the wall of my house?

  Throwing out the sparrows’ nests, sir. He said you told him to.

  What is to be done, Sarah? Sweet-peas and sparrows are incompatible.

  He’s sorry to do it, sir. He showed me a nest with four little ones, and the moment I touched their beaks they opened them, thinking their father and mother were bringing them food.

  You think more of the sparrows than of Michael, Sarah.

  I’d think of him ready enough if it wasn’t for my prayers.

  The door closed. The doctor was alone again, and he continued his letter to Helena Lynch, hearing Michael’s shears among the ivy.

  THE END

  Uncollected Short Stories

  CONTENTS

  A FLOOD

  UNDER THE FAN

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  A RUSSIAN HUSBAND

  DRIED FRUIT

  TWO MEN

  A STRANGE DEATH

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  A FAITHFUL HEART

  PARTED

  AN EPISODE IN BACHELOR LIFE

  AN EPISODE IN MARRIED LIFE

  EMMA BOVARY

  THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN

  AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD

  THE STRANGE STORY OF THE THREE GOLDEN FISHES

  A FLOOD

  IT SEEMED TO him that he was in very cold muddy water full of little waves, and that by treading water and putting forth all his strength he was able to keep himself above them. But the wind blew them higher; they slapped him in the mouth, and he had much trouble in getting his breath between. All of a sudden it occurred to him that it would be much easier to abandon this painful striving and to lie back amid the waves. He took a long deep breath, the water slipped down into his lungs, and he lay quite natural and comfortable until a dinning sound began over his head. He tried to sink deeper into the stream, but the noise grew louder and he could not but think that he was rising to the surface. At last he opened his eyes.

  ‘It’s this infernal rain on the roof that makes me dream,’ he said.

  A bed had been made up for him in the kitchen on three chairs, and when he awoke he found himself sitting bolt upright with his arms bent as if he were treading water, his legs stiff and numbed with cold. The hearth was full of ashes with a last spark fading in the dawn light, and catching an end of his blanket he rubbed his hands against it. His perceptions lengthened out and he went to the window, but seeing water everywhere he fancied for a moment that he must be still dreaming. The pigs had broken out of their sties and were swimming amid various wreckage; the house dog was swimming alongside of his kennel; the hens rose in short flights - two were already drowned, the others were drowning - but the cock perched on his coop crowed defiantly.

  Tom looked to where the day was breaking; a thin pale light soaked slowly through the clouds, and he could just distinguish the tops of the willows above the water.

  The staircase behind him creaked, and turning hurriedly he saw old Daddy Lupton awful in his night-shirt, like Death himself coming to bid him good morning.

  ‘Well,’ said Daddy, ‘what do ‘ee think about the jade now? She makes one feel young again. The biggest flood we’ve had these fifty years.’

  The old man’s levity inspired hope in Tom that the river would not rise any higher, and that the house was not in danger. Tom asked him if this were so, but Daddy continued to babble of a great flood of sixty years ago in which he had nearly lost his life. A big flood it was, but nothing to the great flood of nearly eighty years ago. It had carried a village quite away, and the old man followed Tom to the window, telling him how the water had come down the valley faster than a horse could gallop.

  ‘All my brothers and sisters were drowned, father and mother too; but the cradle floated right away as far as Harebridge, where it was picked up by a party in a boat. There h’ant been no flood to speak of since then. A fine jade she once was, and when it rained like this we used to lie quaking in our beds. Now we sleep sound enough.’

  ‘I must wake ’em,’ said Tom.

  He rushed upstairs, called out, and in a few minutes the pointsman and his family were standing in the kitchen: John Lupton, a tall man with a long neck and thin square shoulders, a red beard and small queer eyes and hands freckled and hairy, and Margaret Lupton, his wife, a pleasant portly woman of forty, with soft blue eyes and regular features. Her daughter, Liz, took after her father - a thinshouldered, thin-featured girl with small ardent eyes and dark reddish crinkly hair. But Billy, Liz’s brother, took after his mother. He was very like her, the same soft oval face with blue eyes and no distinctive feature; the same sweet retiring nature, more of a girl than a boy; but the boy in him expressed a certain curiosity for Tom’s boat.

  ‘Shall we go in the boat, Father?’

  ‘What boat, sonny?’

  ‘Tom’s boat.’

  ‘Tom’s boat wouldn’t hold us all.’

  ‘We needn’t all go together.’

  ‘My boat is far enough from ’ere by this time,’ said Tom, ‘or most like she’s at the bottom of the river. I tied her last night to the old willow.’

  Tom was a fair-complexioned, broad-shouldered young fellow, an apple grower that lived on the other side of the river. He and Liz were to be married at the end of the week, and yesterday being Sunday he had rowed himself across at sundown, and they had gone for their wonted walk. When they came home supper was on the table, and the hours after had gone by pleasantly, his arm being round Liz’s waist, till the time came for him to bid her good night, but on seeing the swollen river she had turned her pretty freckled face to his and dissuaded him, and they had returned to the cottage.

  ‘I never seed the river rise so quickly afore,’ said Lupton. ‘I did. I did.’

  It was Daddy that had answered. He was still in his nightshirt, and his last tooth shook in his white beard.

  ‘Go and dress ‘eeself, Father. And why, Mother, don’t ‘ee light the fire? The morning is that rare cold we’ll all be the better for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Yes, Father, I don’t be long now,’ and she began breaking sticks.

  While the kettle was boiling Tom told them that the pigs had broken out of their st
ies; they lamented the loss of their winter food, and Billy burst into tears on hearing that Peter - his friend, Peter, the house dog - had gone away, swimming after his kennel.

  ‘Come, let us sit down to breakfast,’ Lupton said.

  But they had hardly tasted their tea when Billy cried out: ‘Father, Father, the water be coming in under the door yonder. Take me on ‘ee knee, Father.’Ee did promise to take me to Harebridge. But if I drown I shall never see the circus.’

  Lupton took the little chap on his knee.

  ‘There will be no danger of that. Grandfather will tell ‘ee that this be nothing to the floods he knew when he was a little boy.’

  The water continued to come under the door, collecting where the asphalted floor had been worn, and they watched it rising out of these slight holes and coming towards the table. It came at first very slowly, and then suddenly it rose over their knees, and while Mrs Lupton took the baby out of the cot the others searched for tea, sugar, bacon, eggs, coal, and candles.

  ‘We shall be wanting all these things,’ Lupton said, ‘for the water may keep us upstairs for hours to come.’

  And they were very wet when they assembled in Lupton’s bedroom. Lupton emptied his big boots out of the window and called on Tom to do the same. Liz wrung out her petticoats, and standing round the table they supped their tea and ate some slices of bread and butter. The baby had been laid asleep on the bed, and Daddy sat by the baby softening his bread in his mug of tea, mumbling to himself, his fading brain full of incoherent recollections.

  ‘The folk in them fine houses will be surprised to see the water at the bottom of their parks,’ said Lupton, to break an oppressive silence.

  ‘They be like to live so high up the water will never reach them,’ Mrs Lupton answered.