Muslin by George Moore

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In May the Bartons went abroad, and Olive flirted with foreign
titles--French Counts, Spanish Dukes, Russian Princes, Swedish noblemen
of all kinds, and a goodly number of English refugees with
irreproachable neckties and a taste for baccarat. In the balmy gardens
of Ostend and Boulogne, jubilant with June and the overture of
Masaniello, Milord and Mrs. Barton walked in front, talking and laughing
gracefully. Olive chose him who flattered her the most outrageously; and
Alice strove hard to talk to the least objectionable of the men she was
brought in contact with. Amid these specious talkers there were a few
who reminded her of Mr. Harding, and she hoped later on to be able to
turn her present experiences to account. There was, of course, much
dining at cafes and dining at the casinos, and evening walks along the
dark shore. Alice often feared for her sister, but the girl's vanity and
lightheadedness were her safeguards, and she returned to Galway only a
little wearied by the long chase after amusement.

The soft Irish summer is pleasant after the glare of foreign towns, and
the country, the rickety stone walls and the herds of cattle, the deep
curved lines of the plantations of the domain lands, the long streaks of
brown bog, the flashing tarns of bog-water, and the ruined cottage, lay
dozing in beautiful silvery haze. There was much charm for Alice in
these familiar signs; and, although she did not approve of--although she
would not care ever to meet them again--the people she had met at Ostend
and Dieppe had interested her. She had picked up ideas and had received
impressions, and with these germinating in her, a time of quiet, a time
for reading and thinking, came as a welcome change after the noise of
casinos and the glitter of fireworks. The liberty she had enjoyed, the
sense it had brought with it that she was neither a doll nor a victim,
had rendered her singularly happy. The plot of a new story was singing
in her head, the characters flitted before her eyes, and to think of
them or to tell Cecilia of them was a pleasure sufficient for all her
daily desire. Olive, too, was glad. The sunlight has gone into her
blood, and she romps with her mother and Milord amid the hay, or,
stretched at length, she listens to the green air of the lawn, her
dreams ripple like water along a vessel's side, the white wake of the
past in bubble behind her; and when the life of the landscape is burnt
out, and the day in dying seems to have left its soul behind, she stands
watching, her thoughts curdling gently, the elliptical flight of the
swallows through the gloom, and the flutter of the bats upon the dead
sky.

But the thoughtless brain, fed for many weeks upon noise and glitter,
soon began to miss its accustomed stimulants, and Mrs. Barton was quick
to comprehend sudden twitchings of the face and abrupt movements of the
limbs. And, keenly alive to what was passing in her daughter's mind, she
insisted on Olive's accompanying her to the tennis-parties with which
the county teemed. Sir Charles, Mr. Adair, and even poor Sir Richard
were put forward as the most eligible of men.

'It is impossible to say when the big fish will be caught; it is often
the last try that brings him to land,' murmured Mrs. Barton. But Olive
had lost courage, and could fix her thoughts on no one. And, often when
they returned home, she would retire to her room to have a good cry.

'Leave me alone, Alice; oh, go away. Don't tease me, don't tease me! I
only want to be left alone.'

'But listen, dear; can I do anything for you?'

'You! no, no, indeed you can't. I only want to be left alone. I am so
miserable, so unhappy; I wish I were dead!'

'Dead?'

'Yes, dead; what's the use of living when I know that I shall be an old
maid? We shall all be old maids. What's the use of being pretty, either,
when Violet, though she be but a bag of bones, has got the Marquis? I
have been out two seasons now, and nothing has come of all the trying.
And yet I was the belle of the season, wasn't I, Alice?' And now,
looking more than ever like a cameo Niobe, Olive stared at her sister
piteously. 'Oh yes, Alice, I know I shall be an old maid; and isn't it
dreadful, and I the belle of the season? It makes me so unhappy. No one
ever heard of the belle (and I was the belle not of one, but of two
seasons) remaining an old maid. I can understand a lot of ugly things
not getting married, but I--'

Alice smiled, and half ironically she asked herself if Olive really
suffered. No heart-pang was reflected in those blue mindless eyes; there
was no heart to wound: only a little foolish vanity had been bruised.

'And to think,' cried this whimpering beauty, when Alice had seen her
successfully through a flood of hysterical tears, 'that I was silly
enough to give up dear Edward. I am punished for it now, indeed I am;
and it was very wicked of me--it was a great sin. I broke his heart. But
you know, Alice dear, that it was all mamma's fault; she urged me on;
and you know how I refused, how I resisted her. Didn't I resist--tell
me. You know, and why won't you say that I did resist?'

'You did, indeed, Olive; but you must not distress yourself, or you will
make yourself ill.'

'Yes, perhaps you are right, there's nothing makes one look so ugly as
crying, and if I lost my looks and met Edward he might not care for me.
He'd be disappointed, I mean--but I haven't lost my looks; I am just as
pretty as I was when I came out first. Am I not, Alice?'

'Indeed you are, dear.'

'You don't think I have gone off a bit--now do tell me? and I want to
ask you what you think of my hair in a fringe; Papa says it isn't
classical, but that's nonsense. I wish I knew how Edward would like me
to wear it.'

'But you mustn't think of him, Olive dear; you know mother would never
hear of it.'

'I can't help thinking of him. . . . And now I will tell you something,
Alice, if you promise me on your word of honour not to scold me, and,
above all, not to tell mamma.'

'I promise.'

'Well, the other day I was walking at the end of the lawn feeling so
very miserable. You don't know how miserable I feel; you are never
miserable, for you think of nothing but your books. Well (mind, you have
given me your word not to tell anyone), I saw Captain Hibbert riding
along the road, and when he saw me he stopped his horse and kissed his
hand to me.'

'And what did you do?'

'I don't know what I did. He called me, and then I saw Milord coming
along the road, and fled but, oh, isn't it cruel of mamma to have
forbidden Edward to come and see us? and he loving me as much as ever.'

This was not the moment to advise her sister against clandestine
meetings with Captain Hibbert; she was sobbing violently, and Alice had
to assure her again and again that no one who had been the belle of the
season had ever remained an old maid. But Alice (having well in mind the
fate that had befallen May Gould) grew not a little alarmed when, in the
course of next week, she suddenly noticed that Olive was in the habit of
going out for long walks alone, and that she invariably returned in a
state of high spirits, all the languor and weariness seeming to have
fallen from her.

Alice once thought of following her sister. She watched her open the
wicket and walk across the meadows towards the Lawler domain. There was
a bypath there leading to the highroad, but the delicacy of their
position in relation to the owners prevented the Bartons from ever
making use of it. Nor did Alice fail to notice that about the same time,
Barnes, on the pretence of arranging the room for the evening, would
strive to drive her from her writing-table, and beds were made and
unmade, dresses were taken out of the wardrobe, and importuning
conversations were begun. But, taking no heed of the officious maid,
Alice, her thoughts tense with anxiety, sat at her window watching the
slender figure of the girl growing dim in the dying light. Once she did
not return until it was quite dark, and, reproaching herself for having
remained so long silent, Alice walked across the pleasure-grounds to
meet her.

'What, you here?' cried Olive, surprised at finding her sister waiting
for her at the wicket. She was out of breath; she had evidently been
running.

'Yes, Olive, I was anxious to speak to you--you must know that it is
very wrong to meet Captain Hibbert--and in the secrecy of a wood!'

'Who told you I had been to meet Captain Hibbert? I suppose you have
been following me!'

'No, Olive, I haven't, and you have no right to accuse me of such
meanness. I have not been following you, but I cannot help putting two
and two together. You told me something of this once before, and since
then you have scarcely missed an evening.'

'Well, I don't see any harm in meeting Edward; he is going to marry me.'

'Going to marry you?'

'Yes, going to marry me; is there anything so very extraordinary in
that? Mamma had no right to break off the match, and I am not going to
remain an old maid.'

'And have you told mother about this?'

'No, where's the use, since she won't hear of it?'

'And are you going to run away with Captain Hibbert?'

'Run away with him!' exclaimed Olive, laughing strangely. 'No, of course
I am not.'

'And how are you to marry him if you don't tell mother?'

'I shall tell her when the time comes to tell her. And now, Alice dear,
you will promise not to betray me, won't you? You will not speak about
this to anyone, you promise me? If you did, I know I should go mad or
kill myself.'

'But when will you tell mother of your resolution to marry Captain
Hibbert?'

'Tell her? I'll tell her to-morrow if you like; that is to say, if you
will give me your word of honour not to speak to her about my meeting
Edward in the Lawler Wood.'

Afterwards Alice often wondered at her dullness in not guessing the
truth. But at the time it did not occur to her that Olive might have
made arrangements to elope with Captain Hibbert; and, on the
understanding that all was to be explained on the following day, she
promised to keep her sister's secret.

XXV

Lord Dungory dined at Brookfield that evening. He noticed that Olive was
nervous and restless, and he reminded her of what a French poet had said
on the subject of beauty. But she only turned her fair head impatiently,
and a little later on when her mother spoke to her she burst into tears.
Nor was she as easily consoled as usual, and she did not become calm
until Mrs. Barton suggested that her dear child was ill, and that she
would go upstairs and put her to bed. Then, looking a little alarmed,
Olive declared she was quite well, but she passionately begged to be
left alone. As they left the dining-room she attempted to slip away;
Alice made a movement as if to follow her, but Mrs. Barton said:

'Leave her to herself, Alice; she would rather be left alone. She has
overstrained her nerves, that is all.'

Olive heard these words with a singular satisfaction, and as she
ascended the stairs from the first landing, her heart beat less
violently. On the threshold of her room she paused to listen for the
drawing-room door to shut. Through the silent house the lock sounded
sharply.

'I hope none of them will come upstairs bothering after me,' the girl
murmured to herself. 'If they do I shall go mad;' and standing in the
middle of the floor she looked round the room vacantly, unable to
collect her thoughts. The wardrobe was on her right, and, seeing herself
in the glass, she wondered if she were looking well. Her eyes wandered
from her face to her shoulders, and thence to her feet. Going over to
the toilette-table she sought amid her boots, and, having selected a
strong pair, she began to button them. Her back was turned to the door,
and at the slightest sound she started. Once or twice the stairs
creaked, and she felt something would occur to stop her. Her heart was
beating so violently that she thought she was going to be ill; and she
almost burst out crying because she could not make up her mind if she
should put on a hat and travelling-shawl, or run down to the wood as she
was, to meet the Captain. 'He will surely,' she thought, 'have something
in the carriage to put around me, but he may bring the dog-cart, and it
looks very cold. But if Alice or mamma saw me coming downstairs with a
shawl on, they'd suspect something, and I shouldn't be able to get away.
I wonder what time it is? I promised to meet Edward at nine; he'll of
course wait for me, but what time is it? We dined at half-past seven; we
were an hour at dinner, half-past eight, and I have been ten minutes
here. It must be nearly nine now, and it will take me ten minutes to get
to the corner of the road. The house is quiet now.'

Olive ran down a few steps, but at that moment heavy footsteps and a
jingling of glasses announced that the butler was carrying glasses from
the dining-room to the pantry. 'When will he cease, when will he cease;
will he hang about that passage all night?' the girl asked herself
tremblingly; and so cruel, so poignant had her suspense become, that had
it been prolonged much further her overwrought nerves would have given
way, and she would have lapsed into a fit of hysterics. But the
tray-full of glasses she had heard jingling were now being washed, and
the irritative butler did not stir forth again. This was Olive's
opportunity. From the proximity of the drawing-room to the hall-door it
was impossible for her to open it without being heard; the kitchen-door
was equally, even more, dangerous, and she could hear the servants
stirring in the passages; there was no safe way of getting out of the
house unseen, except through the dining-room.

The candles were lighted, the crumbs were still on the tablecloth;
passing behind the red curtain she unlocked the French window, and she
shivered in the keen wind that was blowing.

It was almost as bright as day. A September moon rose red, and in a
broken and fragmentary way the various aspects of the journey that lay
before her were anticipated: as she ran across the garden swards she saw
the post-horses galloping in front of her; as her nervous fingers strove
to unfasten the wicket, she thought of the railway-carriage; and as she
passed under the great dark trunks of the chestnut-trees she dreamed of
Edward's arm that would soon be cast protectingly around her, and his
face; softer than the leafy shadows above her, would be leaned upon her,
and his eyes filled with a brighter light than the moon's would look
down into hers.

The white meadow that she crossed so swiftly gleamed like the sea, and
the cows loomed through the greyness like peaceful apparitions. But the
dark wood with its sepulchral fir-tops and mysteriously spreading
beech-trees was full of formless terror, and once the girl screamed as
the birds flew with an awful sound through the dark undergrowth. A
gloomy wood by night has terrors for the bravest, and it was only the
certainty that she was leaving girl-life--chaperons, waltz-tunes, and
bitter sneering, for ever--that gave courage to proceed. A bit of
moss-grown wall, a singularly shaped holly-bush, a white stone, took
fantastic and supernatural appearances, and once she stopped, paralyzed
with fear, before the grotesque shadow that a dead tree threw over an
unexpected glade. A strange bird rose from the bare branches, and at
that moment her dress was caught by a bramble, and, when her shriek tore
the dark stillness, a hundred wings flew through the pallor of the
waning moon.

At the end of this glade there was a paling and a stile that Olive would
have to cross, and she could now hear, as she ran forward, the needles
of the silver firs rustling with a pricking sound in the wind. The heavy
branches stretched from either side, and Olive thought when she had
passed this dernful alley she would have nothing more to fear; and she
ran on blindly until she almost fell in the arms of someone whom she
instantly believed to be Edward.

'Oh! Edward, Edward, I am nearly dead with fright!' she exclaimed.

'I am not Edward,' a woman answered. Olive started a step backwards; she
would have fainted, but at the moment the words were spoken Mrs.
Lawler's face was revealed in a beam of weak light that fell through a
vista in the branches.

'Who are you? Let me pass.'

'Who am I? You know well enough; we haven't been neighbours for fifteen
years without knowing each other by sight. So you are going to run away
with Captain Hibbert!'

'Oh, Mrs. Lawler, let me pass. I am in a great hurry, I cannot wait; and
you won't say anything about meeting me in the wood, will you?'

'Let you pass, indeed; and what do you think I came here for? Oh, I know
all about it--all about the corner of the road, and the carriage and
post-horses! a very nice little plan and very nicely arranged, but I'm
afraid it won't come off--at least, not to-night.'

'Oh, won't it, and why?' cried Olive, clasping her hands. 'Then it was
Edward who sent you to meet me, to tell me that--that--What has
happened?'

'Sent me to tell you! Whom do you take me for? Is it for a--well, a nice
piece of cheek! I carry your messages? Well, I never!'

'Then what did you come here for--how did you know? . . .'

'How did I know? That's my business. What did I come here for? What do
you think? Why, to prevent you from going off with Teddy.'

'With Teddy!'

'Yes, with Teddy. Do you think no one calls him Teddy but yourself?'

Then Olive understood, and, with her teeth clenched she said, 'No, it
isn't true; it is a lie; I will not believe it. Let me pass. What
business have you to detain me?--what right have you to speak to me? We
don't know you; no one knows you: you are a bad woman whom no one will
know.'

'A bad woman! I like that--and from you. And what do you want to be, why
are you running away from home? Why, to be what I was. We're all alike,
the same blood runs in our veins, and when the devil is in us we must
have sweethearts, get them how we may: the airs and graces come on
after; they are only so much trimming.'

'How dare you insult me, you bad woman? Let me pass; I don't know what
you mean.'

'Oh yes, you do. You think Teddy will take you off to Paris, and spoon
you and take you out; but he won't, at least not to-night. I shan't give
him up so easily as you think for, my lady.'

'Give him up! What is he to you? How dare you speak so of my future
husband? Captain Hibbert only loves me, he has often told me so.'

'Loves nobody but you! I suppose you think that he never kissed, or
spooned, or took anyone on his knee but you. Well, I suppose at twenty
we'd believe anything a man told us; and we always think we are getting
the first of it when we are only getting someone else's leavings. But it
isn't for chicks of girls like you that a man cares, it isn't to you a
man comes for the love he wants; your kisses are very skim milk indeed,
and it is we who teach them the words of love that they murmur
afterwards in your ears.'

The women looked at each other in silence, and both heard the needles
shaken through the darkness above them. Mrs. Lawler stood by the stile,
her hand was laid on the paling. At last Olive said:

'Let me pass. I will not listen to you any longer; nor do I believe a
word you have said. We all know what you are; you are a bad woman whom
no one will visit. Let me pass!' and pushing passionately forward she
attempted to cross the stile. Then Mrs. Lawler took her by the shoulder
and threw her roughly back. She fell to the ground heavily.

'Now you had better get up and go home,' said Mrs. Lawler, and she
approached the prostrate girl. 'I didn't mean to hurt you; but you
shan't elope with Teddy if I can prevent it. Why don't you get up?'

'Oh! my leg, my leg; you have broken my leg!'

'Let me help you up.'

'Don't touch me,' said Olive, attempting to rise; but the moment she put
her right foot to the ground she shrieked with pain, and fell again.

'Well, if you are going to take it in that way, you may remain where you
are, and I can't go and ring them up at Brookfield. I don't think there
will be much eloping done to-night, so farewell.'

XXVI

About ten o'clock on the night of Olive's elopement, Alice knocked
tremblingly at her mother's door.

'Mother,' she said, 'Olive is not in her room, nor yet in the house; I
have looked for her everywhere.'

'She is downstairs with her father in the studio,' said Mrs. Barton;
and, signing to her daughter to be silent, she led her out of hearing of
Barnes, who was folding and putting some dresses away in the wardrobe.

'I have been down to the studio,' Alice replied in a whisper.

'Then I am afraid she has run away with Captain Hibbert. But we shall
gain nothing by sending men out with lanterns and making a fuss; by this
time she is well on her way to Dublin. She might have done better than
Captain Hibbert, but she might also have done worse. She will write to
us in a few days to tell us that she is married, and to beg of us to
forgive her.'

And that night Mrs. Barton slept even more happily, with her mind more
completely at rest, than usual; whereas Alice, fevered with doubt and
apprehension, lay awake. At seven o'clock she was at her window,
watching the grey morning splinter into sunlight over the quiet fields.
Through the mist the gamekeeper came, and another man, carrying a woman
between them, and the suspicion that her sister might have been killed
in an agrarian outrage gripped her heart like an iron hand. She ran
downstairs, and, rushing across the gravel, opened the wicket-gate.
Olive was moaning with pain, but her moans were a sweet reassurance in
Alice's ears, and without attempting to understand the man's story of
how Miss Olive had sprained her ankle in crossing the stile in their
wood, and how he had found her as he was going his rounds, she gave the
man five shillings, thanked him, and sent him away. Barnes and the
butler then carried Olive upstairs, and in the midst of much confusion
Mr. Barton rode down the avenue in quest of Dr. Reed--galloped down the
avenue, his pale hair blowing in the breeze.

'I wish you had come straight to me,' said Mrs. Barton to Alice, as soon
as Barnes had left the room. 'We'd have got her upstairs between us, and
then we might have told any story we liked about her illness.'

'But the Lawlers' gamekeeper would know all about it.'

'Ah, yes, that's true. I never heard of anything so unfortunate in my
life. An elopement is never very respectable, but an elopement that does
not succeed, when the girl comes home again, is just as bad as--I cannot
think how Olive could have managed to meet Captain Hibbert and arrange
all this business, without my finding it out. I feel sure she must have
had the assistance of a third party. I feel certain that all this is
Barnes's doing. I am beginning to hate that woman, with her perpetual
smile, but it won't do to send her away now; we must wait.' And on these
words Mrs. Barton approached the bed.

Shaken with sudden fits of shivering, and her teeth chattering, Olive
lay staring blindly at her mother and sister. Her eyes were expressive
at once of fear and pain.

'And now, my own darling, will you tell me how all this happened?'

'Oh, not now, mother--not now . . . I don't know; I couldn't help it. . . .
You mustn't scold me, I feel too ill to bear it.'

'I am not thinking of scolding you, dearest, and you need not tell me
anything you do not like. . . . I know you were going to run away with
Captain Hibbert, and met with an accident crossing the stile in the
Lawler Wood.'

'Oh, yes, yes; I met that horrid woman, Mrs. Lawler; she knew all about
it, and was waiting for me at the stile. She said lots of dreadful
things to me . . . I don't remember what; that she had more right to
Edward than I--'

'Never mind, dear; don't agitate yourself thinking of what she said.'

'And then, as I tried to pass her, she pushed me and I fell, and hurt my
ankle so badly that I could not get up; and she taunted me, and she said
she could not help me home because we were not on visiting terms. And I
lay in that dreadful wood all night. But I can't speak any more, I feel
too ill; and I never wish to see Edward again. . . . The pain of my ankle
is something terrible.'

Mrs. Barton looked at Alice expressively, and she whispered in her ear:

'This is all Barnes's doing, but we cannot send her away. . . . We must put
a bold face on it, and brave it out.'

Dr. Reed was announced.

'Oh, how do you do, doctor? . . . It is so good of you to come at once.
. . . We were afraid Mr. Barton would not find you at home. I am afraid
that Olive has sprained her foot badly. Last night she went out for a
walk rather late in the evening, and, in endeavouring to cross a stile,
she slipped and hurt herself so badly that she was unable to return
home, and lay exposed for several hours to the heavy night dews. I am
afraid she has caught a severe cold. . . . She has been shivering.'

'Can I see her foot?'

'Certainly. Olive, dear, will you allow Dr. Reed to see your ankle?'

'Oh, take care, mamma; you are hurting me!' shrieked the girl, as Mrs.
Barton removed the bedclothes. At this moment a knock was heard at the
door.

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