Muslin by George Moore

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'She will find that that temper of hers will stand in her way if she
doesn't learn to control it,' Violet said; 'but, now she is gone, tell
me, Alice, how do you think she played her part? As far as I can judge
she didn't seem to put any life into it. You meant the Princess to be a
sharp, cunning woman of the world, didn't you?'

'No, not exactly; but I agree with you that Olive didn't put life into
it.'

'Well, anyhow, the play was a great success, and you got, dear Alice,
the handsomest prize that has ever been given in the school.'

'And how do you think I did the King? Did I make him look like a man? I
tried to walk just as Fred Scully does when he goes down to the
stables.'

'You did the part very well, May; but I think I should like him to have
been more sentimental.'

'I don't think men are sentimental--at least, not as you think they are.
I tried to copy Fred Scully.'

'My part was a mere nothing. You must write me a something, Alice, one
of these days--a coquettish girl, you know, who could twist a man round
her fingers. A lot of _bavardage_ in it.'

'I suppose you'll never be able to speak English again, now you've got
the prize for French conversation.'

'Sour grapes! You would like to have got it yourself. I worked hard for
it. I was determined to get it, for ma says it is of great advantage in
society for a girl to speak French well.'

'Jealous! I should like to know why I should be jealous. Of what? I got
all I tried for. Besides, the truth about your French prize is that you
may consider yourself very fortunate, for if' (she mentioned the name of
one of her schoolfellows) 'hadn't been so shy and timid, you'd have come
off second best.'

The rudeness of this retort drew a sharp answer from Violet; and then,
in turn, but more often simultaneously, the girls discussed the justice
of the distribution. The names of an infinite number of girls were
mentioned; but when, in the babbling flow of convent-gossip, a favourite
nun was spoken of, one of the chatterers would sigh, and for a moment be
silent.

The violet waters of the bay had darkened, and, like the separating
banners of a homeward-moving procession, the colours of the sky went
east and west. The girdle of rubies had melted, had become the pale red
lining of a falling mantle; the large spaces of gold grew dim; orange
and yellow streamers blended; lilac and blue pennons faded to deep
greys; dark hoods and dark veils were drawn closer; purple was gathered
like garments about the loins; the night fell, and the sky, now
decorated with a crescent moon and a few stars, was filled with
stillness and adoration. The day's death was exquisite, even human; and
as she gazed on the beautiful corpse lowered amid the fumes of a
thousand censers into an under-world, even Violet's egotism began to
dream.

'The evening is lovely. I am glad; it is the last we shall pass here,'
said the girl pensively, 'and all good-byes are sad.'

'Yes, we have been happy,' said May, 'and I too am sorry to leave; but
then we couldn't spend our lives here. There are plenty of things to be
done at home; and I suppose we shall all get married one of these days?
And there will be balls and parties before we get married. I don't think
that I'd care to get married all at once. Would you, Violet?'

'I don't know. Perhaps not, unless it was to someone very grand indeed.'

'Oh, would you do that? I don't think I could marry a man unless I loved
him,' said May.

'Yes, but you might love someone who was very grand as well as someone
who wasn't.'

'That's true enough; but then--' and May stopped, striving to readjust
her ideas, which Violet's remark had suddenly disarranged. After a pause
she said:

'But does your mother intend to bring you to Dublin for the season? Are
you going to be presented this year?'

'I hope so. Mamma said I should be, last vacation.'

'I shall take good care that I am. The best part of the hunting will be
over, and I wouldn't miss the Castle balls for anything. Do you like
officers?'

The crudity of the question startled Alice, and it was with difficulty
she answered she didn't know--that she had not thought about the matter.

May and Violet continued the conversation; and over the lingering waste
of yellow, all that remained to tell where the sun had set, the night
fell like a heavy, blinding dust, sadly and regretfully, as the last
handful of earth thrown upon a young girl's grave.

IV

In the tiny cornfields the reapers rose from their work to watch the
carriage. Mr. Barton commented on the disturbed state of the country.
Olive asked if Mr. Parnell was good-looking. A railway-bridge was passed
and a pine-wood aglow with the sunset, and a footman stepped down from
the box to open a swinging iron gate.

This was Brookfield. Sheep grazed on the lawn, at the end of which,
beneath some chestnut-trees, was the house. It had been built by the
late Mr. Barton out of a farmhouse, but the present man, having
travelled in Italy and been attracted by the picturesque, had built a
verandah; and for the same reason had insisted on calling his daughter
Olive.

'Oh there, mamma!' cried Olive, looking out of the carriage window; and
the two girls watched their mother, a pretty woman of forty, coming
across the greensward to meet them.

She moved over the greensward in a skirt that seemed a little too
long--a black silk skirt trimmed with jet. As she came forward her
daughters noticed that their mother dyed her hair in places where it
might be suspected of turning grey. It was parted in the middle and she
wore it drawn back over her ears and slightly puffed on either side in
accordance with the fashion that had come in with the Empress Eugenie.
Even in a photograph she was like a last-century beauty sketched by
Romney in pastel--brown, languid, almond-shaped eyes, a thin figure a
little bent. Even in youth it had probably resembled Alice's rather than
Olive's, but neither had inherited her mother's hands--the most
beautiful hands ever seen--and while they trifled with the newly bought
_foulards_ a warbling voice inquired if Olive was sure she was not
tired.

'Five hours in the train! And you, Alice? You must be starving, my dear,
and I'm afraid the saffron buns are cold. Milord brought us over such a
large packet to-day. We must have some heated up. They won't be a
minute.'

'Oh, mamma, I assure you I am not in the least hungry!' cried Olive.

'_La beaute n'a jamais faim, elle se nourrit d'elle meme,'_ replied Lord
Dungory, who had just returned from the pleasure-ground whither he had
gone for a little walk with Arthur.

'You will find Milord the same as ever--_toujours galant_; always
thinking of _la beaute, et les femmes_.'

Lord Dungory was the kind of man that is often seen with the Mrs. Barton
type of woman. An elderly beau verging on the sixties, who, like Mrs.
Barton, suggested a period. His period was very early Victorian, but he
no longer wore a silk hat in the country. A high silk hat in Galway
would have called attention to his age, so the difficulty of costume was
ingeniously compromised by a tall felt, a cross between a pot and a
chimney-pot. For collars, a balance had been struck between the
jaw-scrapers of old time and the nearest modern equivalent; and in the
tying of the large cravat there was a reminiscence, but nothing more, of
the past generation.

He had modelled himself, consciously or unconsciously, on Lord
Palmerston, and in the course of conversation one gathered that he was
on terms of intimacy with the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as Lord
Granville and Lord Hartington, and if the listener was credited with any
erudition, allusion was made to the most celebrated artists and authors,
and to their works. There was a celebrated Boucher in Dungory Castle,
which Milord, it was hinted, had bought for some very small sum many
years ago on the Continent; there was also a cabinet by Buhl and a
statue supposed to be a Jean Gougon, and the proofs of their
authenticity were sometimes spoken of after a set dinner-party. His
speech was urbane, and, on all questions of taste, Lord Dungory's
opinion was eagerly sought for. He gave a tone to the ideas put forward
in the surrounding country houses, and it was through him that Mr.
Barton held the title of a genius born out of due time. If Arthur, he
said, had lived two centuries ago, when the gift of imagination was
considered indispensable in the artist, he would have achieved high
distinction. His subjects--_The Bridal of Triermain_ and _Julius Caesar
overturning the Altars of the Druids_--would have been envied, perhaps
stolen, by the Venetian painters. And this tribute to Arthur's genius,
so generously expressed, enabled him to maintain the amenities of his
life at Brookfield. He never forgot to knock at Arthur's studio-door,
and the moment his eyes fell on a new composition, he spoke of it with
respect; and he never failed to allude to it at lunch. He lunched at
Brookfield every day. At half-past one his carriage was at the door. In
the afternoons he went out to drive with Mrs. Barton or sat in the
drawing-room with her. Four times in the week he remained to dinner, and
did not return home until close on midnight.

Whether he ever made any return to Mrs. Barton for her hospitalities,
and, if so, in what form he repaid his obligations to her, was, when
friends drew together, a favourite topic of conversation in the county
of Galway. It had been remarked that the Bartons never dined at Dungory
Castle except on state occasions; and it was well-known that the Ladies
Cullen hated Mrs. Barton with a hatred as venomous as the poison hid in
the fangs of adders.

But Lord Dungory knew how to charm his tame snakes. For fortune they had
but five thousand pounds each, and, although freedom and a London
lodging were often dreamed of, the flesh-pots of Dungory Castle
continued to be purchased at the price of smiles and civil words
exchanged with Mrs. Barton. Besides, as they grew old and ugly, the
Ladies Cullen had developed an inordinate passion for the conversion of
souls. They had started a school of their own in opposition to the
National school, which was under the direction of the priest, and to
persuade the peasants to read the Bible and to eat bacon on Friday, were
good works that could not be undertaken without funds; and these were
obtained, it was said, by the visits of the Ladies Cullen to Brookfield.

Mrs. Gould declared she could estimate to a fraction the prosperity of
Protestantism in the parish by the bows these ladies exchanged with Mrs.
Barton when their carriages crossed on the roads.

'Here are the saffron buns at last, my dear children;' and Mrs. Barton
pressed them upon her girls, saying that Milord had brought them from
Dungory Castle especially for them. 'Take a bottom piece, Olive, and
Alice, you really must. . . Well, if you won't eat, tell Milord about your
play of King Cophetua and the beggar-maid. Arthur, tell me, how did you
like the play, and how did the nuns like it? To think of my daughter, so
prim and demure, writing a play, and on such a subject.'

'But, mamma, what is there odd in the subject? We all know the old
ballad.'

'Yes, we all know the ballad,' Arthur answered; 'I sing stanzas of it to
the guitar myself.' He began to chant to himself, and Mrs. Barton
listened, her face slanted in the pose of the picture of Lady Hamilton;
and Milord rejoiced in the interlude, for it gave him opportunity to
meditate. Anna (Mrs. Barton) seemed to him more charming and attractive
than he had ever seen her, as she sat in the quiet shadow of the
verandah: beyond the verandah, behind her, the autumn sunshine fell
across the shelving meadows. A quiet harmony reigned over Brookfield.
The rooks came flapping home through the sunlight, and when Arthur had
ceased humming Mrs. Barton said:

'And now, my dear children, if you have finished your tea, come, and I
will show you your room.'

She did not leave the verandah, however, without paying a pretty
compliment to Milord, one that set him thinking how miserable his life
would have been with his three disagreeable daughters if he had not
fallen in with this enchantment. He remembered that it had lasted for
nearly twenty years, and it was as potent as ever. In what did it
consist, he asked himself. He sometimes thought her laughter too
abundant, sometimes it verged on merriment. He did not like to think of
Anna as a merry woman; he preferred to think that wherever she went she
brought happiness with her. He had known her sad, but never melancholy,
for she was never without a smile even when she was melancholy.

Awakening from his reverie he drew his chair closer to Arthur's, and,
with a certain parade of interest, asked him if he had been to the
Academy.

'Did you see anything, Arthur, that in design approached your picture of
_Julius Caesar Overturning the Altars of the Druids_?'

'There were some beautiful bits of painting there,' replied Arthur,
whose modesty forbade him to answer the question directly. 'I saw some
lovely landscapes, and there were some babies' frocks,' he added
satirically. 'In one of these pictures I saw a rattle painted to
perfection.'

'Ah, yes, yes! You don't like the pettiness of family feeling dragged
into art; but if you only condescend to take a little more notice of the
craft--the craft is, after all--'

'I am carried along too rapidly by my feelings. I feel that I must get
my idea on canvas. But when I was in London I saw such a lovely
woman--one of the most exquisite creatures possible to imagine! Oh, so
sweet, and so feminine! I have it all in my head. I shall do something
like her to-morrow.'

Here he began to sketch with his stick in the dust, and from his face it
might be judged he was satisfied with the invisible result. At last he
said:

'You needn't say anything about it, but she sent me some songs, with
accompaniments written for the guitar. You shall hear some of the songs
to-night. . . . Ah, there is the dinner-bell!'

Olive was placed next to Milord, and the compliments paid to her by the
old courtier delighted her. She pretended to understand when he said:
'_La femme est comme une ombre: si vous la suives, elle vous fuit; si
vous fuyez, elle vous poursuit_.' A little later the champagne she had
drunk set her laughing hysterically, and she begged him to translate (he
had just whispered to her mother, '_L'amour est la conscience du plaisir
donne et recu, la certitude de donner et de recevoir_'); and he would
have complied with her request, but Mrs. Barton forbade him. Alice, who
had understood, found herself obliged to say that she had not
understood, which little fib begot a little annoyance in her against her
mother; and Milord, as if he thought that he had been guilty of a slight
indiscretion, said, addressing himself to both girls: '_Gardez bien vos
illusions, mon enfant, car les illusions sont le miroir de l'amour.'_

'Ah! _mais il ne faut pas couvrir trop l'abime avec des fleurs_,' said
Mrs. Barton, as a sailor from his point of vantage might cry, 'Rocks
ahead!'

Arthur only joined occasionally in the conversation; he gazed long and
ardently on his daughter, and then sketched with his thumb-nail on the
cloth, and when they arose from the table, Mrs. Barton said:

'Now, now, I am not going to allow you gentlemen to spend any more time
over your wine. This is our first evening together; come into the
drawing-room with us, and we shall have some music.'

Like most men of an unevenly balanced mind, Arthur loved an eccentric
costume, and soon after he appeared in a long-tasselled cap and a
strangely coloured smoking jacket; he wore a pair of high-heeled
brocaded slippers, and, twanging a guitar, hummed to himself
plaintively. Then, when he thought he had been sufficiently admired, he
sang _A che la morte, Il Balen_, and several other Italian airs, in
which frequent allusion was made to the inconstancy of woman's and the
truth of man's affection. At every pause in the music these sentiments
were laughingly contested by Mrs. Barton. She appealed to Milord. He
never had had anything to complain of. Was it not well known that the
poor woman had been only too true to him? Finally, it was arranged there
should be a little dancing.

As Mrs. Barton said, it was of great importance to know if Olive knew
the right step, and who could put her up to all the latest fashions as
well as Milord? The old gentleman replied in French, and settled his
waistcoat, fearing the garment was doing him an injustice.

'But who is to play?' asked the poetical-looking Arthur, who, on the
highest point of the sofa, hummed and tuned his guitar after true
troubadour fashion.

'Alice will play us a waltz,' said Mrs. Barton winningly.

'Oh yes, Alice dear, play us a waltz,' cried Olive.

'You know how stupid I am; I can't play a note without my music, and it
is all locked up in my trunk upstairs.'

'It won't take you a minute to get it out,' said Mrs. Barton; and
moving, as if she were on wheels, towards her daughter, she whispered:
'Do as I tell you--run upstairs at once and get your music.'

She looked questioningly at her mother and hesitated. But Mrs. Barton
had a way of compelling obedience, and the girl went upstairs, to return
soon after with a roll of music. At the best of times she had little
love of the art, but now, sick with disappointment, and weary from a
long railway journey, to spell through the rhythm of the _My Queen
Waltz_ and the jangle of _L'Esprit Francais_ was to her an odious and,
when the object of it was considered, an abominable duty to perform. She
had to keep her whole attention fixed on the page before her, but when
she raised her eyes the picture she saw engraved itself on her mind. It
was a long time before she could forget Olive's blond, cameo-like
profile seen leaning over the old beau's fat shoulder. Mrs. Barton
laughed and laughed again, declaring the while that it was _la grace et
la beaute reunies._ Mr. Barton shouted and twanged in measure, the
excitement gaining on him until he rushed at his wife, and, seizing her
round the waist, whirled her and whirled her, holding his guitar above
her head. At last they bumped against Milord, and shot the old man and
his burden on to the nearest sofa. Then Alice, who thought her mission
at the piano was over, rose to go, but Mrs. Barton ordered her to resume
her seat, and the dancing was continued till the carriage came up the
gravel sweep to fetch Milord away. This was generally about half-past
eleven, and as he muffled himself up in overcoats, the girls were told
to cram his pockets with cigarettes and bon-bons.

'Bedad, I think it is revolvers and policemen you ought to be givin' me,
not swatemates,' he said, affecting a brogue.

'Oh yes, is it not dreadful?' exclaimed Mrs. Barton. 'I don't know what
we shall do if the Government don't put down the Land League; we shall
all be shot in our beds some night. Did you hear of that murder the
other day?'

'And it is said there will be no rents collected this year,' said Mr.
Barton, as he tightened one of the strings of his guitar.

'Oh, do cease that noise!' said Mrs. Barton. 'And tell me, Lord Dungory,
will the Government refuse us soldiers and police to put the people
out?'

'If we go to the Castle, we shall want more money to buy dresses,' said
Olive.

'_La mer a toujours son ecume pour habiller ses deesses,'_ replied
Milord; and he got into his carriage amid pearly peals of laughter from
Mrs. Barton, intermingled with a few high notes from Olive, who had
already taken to mimicking her mother.

V

Mr. Barton, or Arthur, as he was usually called, always returned to his
studio immediately after breakfast, and, as Mrs. Barton had domestic
duties to attend to, the girls were left to themselves to appreciate
their return home from school and look forward to their entry into the
life of the world.

The two girls descended the stairs with their summer hats and sunshades,
and Alice stopped at the door of the schoolroom. It was here that, only
a few years ago, she had interceded with the dear old governess, and
aided Olive to master the difficulties against which the light brain
could not contend singly--the hardships of striving to recall the number
of continents the world possesses, the impossibility of learning to say
definitely if seven times four made twenty-eight or thirty.

At the end of the passage under the stairs the children used to play for
hours, building strange houses out of boxes of bricks, or dressing dolls
in fantastic costumes. Olive had forgotten, but Alice remembered, and
her thoughts wandered through the land of toys. The box of bricks had
come from an aunt that was now dead; the big doll mother had brought
from Dublin when she went to see the oculist about her eyes; and then
there were other toys that suggested nothing, and whose history was
entirely forgotten. But the clock that stood in the passage was well
remembered, and Alice thought how this old-fashioned timepiece used to
be the regulator and confidant of all their joys and hopes. She saw
herself again listening, amid her sums, for the welcome voice that would
call her away; she saw herself again examining its grave face and
striving to calculate, with childish eagerness, if she would have time
to build another Tower of Babel or put another tack in the doll's frock
before the ruthless iron tongue struck the fatal hour.

'Olive, is it possible you don't remember how we used to listen to the
dear old clock when we were children?'

'You are a funny girl, Alice; you remember everything. Fancy thinking of
that old clock! I hated it, for it brought me to lessons when it struck
eleven.'

'Yes, but it brought you out to play when it struck twelve. See! the
hands are just on the hour; let us wait to hear it strike.'

The girls listened vainly for a sound; and Alice felt as if she had been
apprised of the loss of a tried friend when one of the servants told
them the clock had been broken some years ago.

The kitchen windows looked on a street made by a line of buildings
parallel with the house. These were the stables and outhouses, and they
formed one of the walls of the garden that lay behind, sheltered on the
north side by a thin curtain of beeches, filled every evening with noisy
rooks; and, coming round to the front of the house, the girls lingered
beneath the chestnut-trees, and in the rosary, where a little fountain
played when visitors were present, and then stood leaning over the
wooden paling that defended the pleasure-ground from the cows that
grazed in the generous expanse of grass extending up to the trees of the
Lawler domain. Brookfield was therefore without pretensions--it could
hardly be called 'a place'--but, manifolded in dreams past and present,
it extended indefinitely before Alice's eyes, and, absorbed by the sad
sweetness of retrospection, she lingered while Olive ran through the
rosary from the stables and back again, calling to her sister, making
the sunlight ring with her light laughter. She refrained, therefore,
from reminding her that it was here they used to play with Nell, the old
setter, and that it was there they gave bread to the blind beggar; Olive
had no heart for these things, and when she admired the sleek
carriage-horses that had lately been bought to take them to balls and
tennis-parties, Alice thought of the old brown mare that used to take
them for such delightful drives.

Suddenly Mrs. Barton's voice was heard calling. Milord had arrived: they
were to go into the garden and pick a few flowers to make a buttonhole
for him. Olive darted off at once to execute the commission, and soon
returned with a rose set round with stephanotis. The old lord, seated in
the dining-room, in an arm-chair which Mrs. Barton had drawn up to the
window so that he might enjoy the air, sipped his sherry, and Alice, as
she entered the room, heard him say:

'_Quand on aime on est toujours bien portant_.'

She stopped abruptly, and Mrs. Barton, who already suspected her of
secret criticism, whispered, as she glided across the room:

'Now, my dear girl, go and talk to Milord and make yourself agreeable.'

The girl felt she was incapable of this, and it pained her to listen to
her sister's facile hilarity, and her mother's coaxing observations.
Milord did not, however, neglect her; he made suitable remarks
concerning her school successes, and asked appropriate questions anent
her little play of _King Cophetua_. But whatever interest the subject
possessed was found in the fact that Olive had taken the part of the
Princess; and, re-arranging the story a little, Mrs. Barton declared,
with a shower of little laughs, and many waves of the white hands, that
'my lady there had refused a King; a nice beginning, indeed, and a
pleasant future for her chaperon.'

The few books the house possessed lay on the drawing-room table, or were
piled, in dusty confusion, in the bookcase in Mr. Barton's studio; and,
thinking of them, Alice determined she would pay her father a visit in
his studio.

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