A Drama in Muslin — Book 2 Chapter 4

London: Vizetelly & Co., 1 June 1886, pages 183-204, 8,912 words

CHAPTER IV.

"Dungory Castle, Gort,

"Co. Galway.

"My Dearest Alice, — I was so delighted to hear from you; it was very good of you to write to me. I was deeply interested in your description of the Dublin festivities, and must try and tell you all the news.

"Everybody here is talking of Olive and Lord Kilcarney. It is said that he proposed to her at the Drawing-room. Is this true? I hope so, for she seems to have set her heart on the match. But she is a great deal too nice for him. They say that when he is in London he does nothing but go about from bar-room to bar-room drinking brandies and sodas. It is also said that he used to spend much of his time with actresses. I hope these stories are false, but I cannot help thinking…. Well, we have often talked over these things, and you know what my opinions of men are. I hope I am not doing wrong in speaking like this; but a piece of news has reached me that forces my thoughts back into the old ways — ways that I know you have often reproved me for letting my mind wander in. In a word, darling Alice, I hear that you are very much taken up with a Mr. Harding, a writer, or painter, or something of that sort. Now, will you promise to write and tell me if this be true? I would sooner know the worst at once — hear that you love him madly, passionately, as I believe some women love men. But you, who are so nice, so good, so beautiful, you could not love a man thus. I cannot think you could — I will not think you do. I have been crying all the morning, crying bitterly; horrible thoughts have forced themselves on my mind. I have seen (but it was not true though it seemed so clear; visions are not always true) this man kissing you! Oh! Alice, let me warn you, let me beg of you to think well before you abandon yourself to a man’s power, to a man’s love. It is a vile and degrading thing. How women can endure it I don’t know; the thought fills me with horror. Women are pure, men are obscene animals. Their love is our degradation. Love! a nice name they give it. How can a sentiment that is merely a gratification of the lowest passions be love? And that is all they seek; I know it; in their heart of hearts they despise us.

"But you, Alice; you who are so noble, so pure, so lofty-minded, you would not soil yourself by giving way to such a sentiment. Write! you will write, and tell me that what I saw in vision was a lie, an abominable lie! Nay, you do not love Mr. Harding. You will not marry him; surely you will not. Oh! to be left here alone, never to see you again — I could not bear it, I should die. You will not leave me to die, Alice, dear, you will not; write and tell me you will not. And what grieves me doubly is that it must seem to you, dear, that I am only thinking of myself. I am not; I think of you, I wish to save you from what must be a life of misery and, worse still, of degradation; for every man is a degradation, when he approaches a woman. I know you couldn’t bear up against this; you are too refined, too pure — I can sympathise with you. I know, poor little cripple though I be, the horrors of married life. I know what men are — you smile your own kind, sweet smile; I see it as I write; but you are wrong: I know nothing of men in particular, but I know what the sex is — I know nothing of individuals, but I know what life is. I express myself badly, but you guess what I mean. The very fact of being forced to live apart has helped me to realise how horrible life is, and how the passions of men make it vile and abominable. All their tender little words and attentions are but lust in disguise. I hate them! I could whip, I could beat, I would torture them; and when I had done my worst I should not have done enough to punish them for the wrongs they have done to my sex.

"I know, Alice, dear, I am writing violently, that I am letting my temper get the better of me, and this is very wrong; you have often told me it is very wrong; but I cannot help it, my darling, when I think of the danger you are in. I cannot tell you how, but I do know you are in danger; something, some instinct has put me in communication with you: there are moments when I see you, yes, see you sitting by that man — I see you now: — the scene is a long blue Drawing-room all aglow with gold mirrors and wax candles — he is sitting by you, I see you smiling upon him — my blood boils, Alice — I fear I am going mad; my head drops on the table, and I strive to shut out the odious sight, but I cannot, I cannot, I cannot…..

"I am calmer now: you will forgive me, Alice, dear? I know I am wrong to write to you in this way, but there are moments when I realise things with such horrible vividness that I am, as it were, maddened with pain. Sometimes I awake in the night, and then I see life in all its hideous nakedness, revealed, as it were, by a sudden flash of lightning. Oh, it is terrible to think we are thus. Good-bye, dear, I know you will forgive me, and I hope you will write at once, and will not leave me in suspense: that is the worst torture. With love to our friends Olive, May, and Violet, believe me, darling Alice,

"Yours affectionately,

“CECILIA CULLEN.”

Alice read steadily, word by word; then she let the letter and her hands fall on her lap; and, engrossed in the picture it revealed of Cecilia’s obscured and perturbed mind, she forgot the imminent happiness that played, that flashed like a sunbeam about her. It was a sweet and radiant delight to dream that Harding loved her; but she knew he did not love her: still, why should she force the knife into her soul, and, turning from it, she looked into the gloomy and distorting mirror that Cecilia held menacingly to her: and very sinister life and love seemed therein."And to live in eternal communion with such a picture," thought the girl; "and if it be a true reflection!"

She shuddered. "But no; things are only as we choose to see them;" and, on strong bright wings, her thoughts rose out of the abyss into which they had been, for a moment, forced to gaze; and through all the terrors of original ignorance her confidence in humanity remained unshaken. Is not a good man — and there are good men — of all knowable things the highest? Then why should we turn away from the highest good? Thus Alice reasoned — she who denied the Bethlehem man-god, and was content to accept this poor miserable terrene life of ours as the end of all consciousness, while Cecilia, she who cried out angrily against the flesh, as if it were a foul and leprous thing, bowed in complete humbleness of spirit before that most human of all gods — human even unto bastardy — that a foolish world has accepted as divine.

How various and how intricate are the questions with which we find ourselves confronted in the course of any cerebral investigation! How curiously mental characteristics stop short where you would expect to find a long continuity! how mysteriously they wander from their natal lines into crooked devious ways, and then, suddenly, how they come flowing back in a great stream, differing absolutely in colour and current, from the source from which they started! And yet, if these apparent contradictions were to be pursued closely through the deeps of the night of creation, each could be demonstrated as logical as any theorem in Euclid, either by heredity, or by accidental variations of the physical nature, which in turn react upon the brain. But here we must be brief; and in our diagnosis of the origin of the mind of the writer of the letter, and that of the reader, it will be only necessary to call attention to the fundamental and main lines on which each brain was constructed.

Alice Barton’s power to judge between right and wrong, her love of sentiment, her collectedness, yes, I will say her reasoned collectedness were, as has been already partially shown, the consequence of the passivity of the life and nature of her grandfather (the historian); her power of will, and her clear, concise intelligence were inherited from her mother, and these qualities being placed in a perfectly healthy subject, a subject in whom every organ functioned admirably, the result was a mind that turned instinctively from mysticism and its adjuncts — foolish hope and wild aspiration — to the natural duties and interests of life, its plain and simple rectitudes as she saw them revealed in the general history of mankind. And Cecilia’s dark and illogical mind can also be accounted for. Her hatred of all that concerned sexual passion was consequent on her father’s age and her mother’s loathing for him during conception and pregnancy; and then, if it be considered that this transmitted hatred was planted and left to germinate in a misshapen body, it will be understood how a weird love of the spiritual, of the mystical, was the almost inevitable psychical characteristic that a human being born under such circumstances would possess.

Alice sat on a low chair, her feet set against the fender, and her hands laid on Cecilia’s letter. Her vision was not precise, but there were flashes of sun in it, and her thoughts loomed and floated away. She thought of herself, of Harding, of their first meeting. The first time she had seen him he was sitting in the same place and in the same chair as she was sitting in now. She remembered the first words that had been spoken: the scene was as clear to her as if it were etched upon her brain; and as she mused she thought of the importance of that event. Harding was to her what a mountain is to the level plain. From him she now looked forward and back."So people say that I am in love with him! well, supposing I were I do not know that I should feel ashamed of myself.”

The reflection was an agreeable one, and in it her thoughts floated away like red-sailed barges into the white mists that veil with dreamy enchantment the wharves and the walls of an ancient town. But suddenly she began to think definitely. What did she know of him? Nothing! He was to her as much, but no more than the author of a book in which she was deeply interested: with this difference: — she could hear him reply to her questions; but his answers were only like other books, and revealed nothing of his personality. She would have liked to have known the individual man surrounded with his individual hopes and sufferings, but of these she knew nothing. They had talked of all things, but it seemed to her that of the real man she had never had a glimpse. Never did he unbend, never did he lift the mask he wore. He was interesting, but very unhuman, and he paraded his ideas and his sneers as the lay figures did the mail armour on the castle stairway. She did not know if he were a good or a bad man; she fancied he was not very good, and then she grew angry with herself for suspecting him. Alice was very loyal. But honest or dishonest, she was sure he could love no one, and a bitter heart-pang brought her thoughts to a pause; and she strove to recall his face. She could remember nothing but the cold merciless eyes — eyes that were like the palest blue porcelain: "Why had he been so nice if he meant no more? But how ungrateful I am," thought the girl, and she checked the bitter flow of reproaches that rose in her mind.

It was in the ladies’ drawing-room. Two old ladies sat on the sofa under the window, their white hair and white caps coming out very white upon the grey Irish day. They knitted methodically; and around the ottoman tho young ladies, Gladys and Zoe Brennan, one of the Miss Duffys, and the girl in red, yawned over circulating novels. They longed that a man might come in — not with hope that he would interest them — but because they were accustomed to think of all time as wasted that was not spent in talking to a man.

Nor were they awakened from their languid hopes until Olive came rushing into the room with a large envelope in her hand.

"Oh, I see," she said, "you have got a letter from Cecilia. What does she say? I got one this morning from Barnes;" and, bending her head, Olive whispered in Alice’s ear: "She says that everyone is talking in Galway of when I shall be a marchioness!"

"Is that the letter?" asked Alice, innocently.

"No, you silly, this is a Castle invitation.”

The Brennans and the girl in red looked up.

"Ah, is it for to-night or to-morrow?" said the latter.

"For to-morrow.”

"Now, I wonder if there will be one for me. Is it to dinner or to the dance?"

"To dinner.”

"Ah, really…. yes, very lucky." Her eyes fell, and her look was expressive of her deep disappointment. A dance — yes, but a dinner and a dance!

Then she continued: "Ah, the Castle treats us all very badly. I am glad sometimes when I hear the Land League abusing it. We come up here, and spend all our money on dresses, and we get nothing for it except two State balls, and it is no compliment to ask us to them — they are obliged to. But what do you think of my little coat? It is this that keeps me warm," and Miss O’Reilly held out her sealskin for the company to feel the texture. For the last three weeks she had not failed, on all occasions, to call attention to this garment — "Signor Parisina had said it was lovely." Here she sighed — Signor Parisina had left the hotel. "And I have a new dress coming home — it is all red — a cardinal silk — you know nothing but red suits me!"

“Is the hall-porter distributing the invitations?" asked Gladys Brennan. "Did he give you yours?"

"No, ours was, of course, directed to mamma; I found it in her room.”

"Then perhaps"... Zoo did not finish tho sentence, and both sisters rolled up their worsted-work preparatory to going upstairs.

In Dublin, during six weeks of the year, the arrival of these large official envelopes is watched with an eagerness that words cannot describe. These envelopes are the balm of Gilead; and the Land League, and the hopelessness of matchmaking are merged and lost for a moment in an exquisite thrill of triumph or despair. An invitation to the Castle means much. The grey-headed official who takes you down to dinner may bore you, and, at the dance, you may find yourself without a partner; but the delight of asking your friends if you may expect to meet them on such a night, of telling them afterwards of your successes, are the joys of Dublin; and armed with their invitation, the Bartons scored heavily over the Scullys and the Goulds, who were only asked to the dance.

"And what will the dinner be like, mamma? ’’ asked Olive.

"It will be very grand. Lord Cowper does things in very good style indeed; and our names will be given in the papers. But I don’t think it will amuse you, dear. All the officials have to be asked — judges, police-officers, &c. You will probably go down with some old fellow of sixty: but that can’t be helped. At the dance after, we’ll see the marquis.”

"I told you, mamma, didn’t I, that Barnes wrote that everybody in Galway said he was in love with me, and had proposed?"

"You did, dear; and it does no harm for the report to have got about, for if a thing gets very much spoken of — it forces a man to come to the point. You will wear your red tulle. I don’t know that you look better in anything else.”

Whatever Mrs. Barton’s faults may have been, she did her duty, as she conceived it, by her daughter; and during the long dinner, through the leaves of the flowering plants, she watched her Olive anxiously. A hundred-and-twenty people were present. Mothers and eligible daughters, judges, lords, police-officers, earls, poor-law inspectors, countesses, and Castle officials. Around the great white-painted, gold-listed walls the table, in the form of a horseshoe, was spread. In the soothing light of the shaded lamps, the white glitter of the piled-up silver danced over the talking faces, and descended in silvery waves into the bosoms of the women. Salmon and purple-coloured liveries passed quickly; and in the fragrance of soup and the flavours of sherry, in the lascivious pleasing of the waltz tunes that Liddell’s band poured from a top gallery, the goodly company of time-servers, panders, and

others, forgot their fears of the Land League, and the doom that was now waxing to fulness.

To the girls the dinner seemed interminable, but at the "private dance" afterwards those who were known in official circles, or were fortunate enough to meet their friends, amused themselves. It took place in the Throne Room. As the guests arrived they scanned each other narrowly. People, who had known each other from childhood upwards, as they met on the landing, affected a look of surprise: "Oh! so you are here? I wonder how you got your invitation? Well, I suppose you are better than I took you to be!" Acquaintances saluted each other more cordially than was their wont: he or she who had dined at the Castle took his or her place at once among the élite: he or she who had come to dance was henceforth considered worthy of a bow in Grafton Street. For Dublin is a city without a conviction, without an opinion. Things are right and wrong according to the dictum of the nearest official. If it be not absolutely ill-bred to say you think this, or are inclined to take such or such a view, it is certainly more advisable to say that the Attorney-General thinks so, or that on one occasion you heard the State Steward, the Chamberlain, or any other equally distinguished underling express this or that opinion. Castle tape is worn in time of mourning and in the time of feasting. Every gigman in the Kildare Street wears it in his buttonhole, and the ladies of Merrion Square are found to be gartered with it.

Mrs. Barton’s first thought was to get Olive partners. Milord and Lord Rosshill were sent hither and thither, and with such good result that the whole evening the beauty was beset with A.D.C.s. But the marquis had danced three times with Violet Scully, and Mrs. Barton vented her anger on poor Alice. The girl knew no one, nor was there time to introduce her to men. She was consequently sent off with milord to see where the marquis was hiding; and she was commissioned to tell her sister to answer thus when Lord Kilcarney asked for another dance: "I am engaged, cher marquis, but for you of course I shall have to throw some poor fellow over." Mrs. Barton knew not how to play a waiting game. Her tactics were always to grapple with the enemy. She was a Hannibal: she risked all to gain all. Mrs. Scully, on the contrary, watched the combat from afar — as Moltke did the German lines when they advanced upon Paris.

The Bartons were not invited to the next private dance, and they had to look forward to the State ball given on the following Monday. As they mounted the stairway Mrs. Barton said:

“You know we turn to the left this time and enter Patrick’s Hall by this end; the other entrance is blocked up by the dais; and the wall-flowers, you will find, have shifted their camp. It is considered somewhat bad form to stand about the pillars; but the great thing is to get hold of the best men. We shan’t have long to wait, and then we’ll move up to the dais.”

St. Patrick’s Hall was now a huge democratic crush. All the little sharp glances of the "private dance," "What, you here!" were dispensed with as useless, for all were within their rights in being at the ball. They pushed, laughed, danced. They met as they would have met in Rotten Row, and they took their amusement with the impartiality of pleasure-seekers jigging and drinking in a market-place on fair-day. On either side of the hall there were ascending benches; these were filled with chaperons and debutantes, and over their heads the white-painted gold-listed walls were hung with garlands of evergreen oak interwoven with the celebrated silver shields, the property of the Cowper family, and in front of the curtains hanging about the dais, the maroon legs of His Excellency, and the teeth and diamonds of Her Excellency, were seen passing to and fro, and up and down to the music of oblivion that Liddell dispensed with a flowing arm.

The darling dream of the Dubliner is to dance in this quadrille — it is the highest honour he can ever hope to attain — but, for the moment, all minds were set on the realisation of a more immediate prospect. About the pillars the three and four-season girls were drawn up in battle array; and, their eyes liquid with invitation, they sought to attract the attention of the men as they went in. The girl in red, the Brennans, the Miss Duffys led the assault; even the honourable Miss Gores were there.

"I declare Olive Barton is here!" whispered the redoubtable Bertha; "this doesn’t look as if the beaux were coming forward in their hundreds. It is said that Lord Kilcarney has given her up for Violet Scully.”

“I’m not a bit surprised,’’ said the girl in red; "and, now I think of it, all the beauties come to the same end. I’ll just give her a couple more Castle seasons. It is that that will pull the fine feathers out of her.”

But the beauty was soon spied out by some three or four A.D.C.s; an English lord engaged her for a couple of waltzes, and, in triumph, Mrs. Barton made her way up to the dais where she had given appointment to Lord Dungory, Lord Rosshill, and her other admirers. One of them, an old man of sixty, took Alice out for a waltz, and when it was over she was free to listen to her mother’s laughter, and to watch, until her eyes ached, the whirling of white and rose tulle and the pushing of black cloth shoulders. She was not alone. She was but one of the many debutantes who, amid the chaperons, sat wearily waiting on the high benches. Some are but seventeen, and their sweet, clear eyes seem as a bright morning, full of beautiful possibilities.

Alice was beginning to see to the end, and, as the old sad thoughts came back to her, she thought of the resultless life, the life of white idleness that awaited nearly all of them. What were they but snow-flakes born to shine for a moment and then to fade, to die, to disappear, to become part of the black, the foul-smelling slough of mud below? The drama in muslin was again unfolded, and she could read each act; and there was a "curtain" at the end of each. The first was made of young, hopeful faces, the second of arid solicitation, the third of the bitter, malignant tongues of Bertha Duffy and her friend. They are talking now to a pale little martyr who has spoken to no one, who has not even a brother to take her for a walk down the room, or to the buffet for an ice.

"And are not the Castle balls very nice?" said Bertha, "and how are you amusing yourself?"

"Oh, very much indeed," replied the poor debutante.

“And is it true, Bertha," asks the fierce aunt, "you know all the news, that Mr. Jones has been transferred to another ship and has gone off to the Cape?”

"Yes, yes," replied the girl with a coarse laugh; "a nice end to her beau; and after dinnering him up the whole summer too.”

Alice shuddered. Was it possible, she asked herself, that she was listening to the conversation of people who passed for, and who believed themselves to be, ladies? And to think that only a few years are required to degrade a girl full of sweetness and promise to the level of that horrible harlot-like creature with the yellow hair and wide mouth! And by what delicate degrees is the soul befouled in this drama of muslin, and how little is there left for any use of life when, after torture and disgrace, the soul, that was once so young, appears on the stage for the fourth act. Examine the meagre minds of the Ladies Cullen and the Honourable Miss Gores, listen to their narrow bigotries, and think that once these poor old things were fresh, hopeful, full of aspiration. Now if they could rise for a moment out of their living death it would be like the skeleton in Goya’s picture, to lift the tomb and write on the headstone: "Nada.”

An hour passed, and Alice had begun to experience the worst horrors of a Castle ball. She was sick of pity for those around her, and her lofty spirit resented the insult that was offered to her sex. At last Harding came up. Mrs. Barton received him with enthusiasm: she at once called his attention to Alice, and in a way that seemed to imply "For goodness sake take her off; thank heavens there’s someone who can put up with a plain girl.”

"Have you been long here, Miss Barton?" he said, leaning towards her; "I have been looking out for you, but the crowd is so great that it is hard to find anyone.”

“I think we arrived about a quarter to eleven," Alice answered, somewhat eagerly.

Then, after a pause, Harding said: "Will you give me this waltz?" Alice assented, and, as they made their way through the dancers, he added: "But I believe you do not care about dancing. If you would prefer it, we might go for a walk down the room. Perhaps you would like an ice? This is the way to the buffet.”

But Alice and Harding did not stop long there; they were glad to leave the heat of gas, the odour of sauces, the effervescence of the wine, the detonations of champagne, the tumult of laughter, the racing of plates, the heaving bosoms, the glittering corsets for the peace and the pale blue refinement of the long blue drawing-room. How much of our sentiments and thoughts do we gather from our surroundings; and the shining blue of the turquoise-coloured curtains, the pale dead blue of the Louis XV. furniture, and the exquisite fragility of the glass chandeliers, the gold mirrors rutilant with the light of some hundreds of tall wax candles, were illustrative of the light dreams and delicate lassitude that filled the souls of the women as they lay back whispering to their partners, the crinolettes lifting the skirts over the edges of the sofas. Here the conversation seems serious, there it is smiling, and broken by the passing and repassing of a fan.

"Only four days more of Dublin," said Harding; "I have settled, or rather the fates have settled, that I am to leave next Saturday.”

"And where are you going; to London?"

"Yes, to London. I am sorry I am leaving so soon; but it can’t be helped. I have met many nice people here — some whom I shall not be able to forget.”

"You speak as if it were necessary to forget them — it is surely always hotter to remember.”

"I shall certainly remember you. Besides, I intend to write, and you have promised to send me some of your work. There is no doubt but that I shall be able to get it published.”

"It is very kind of you," said Alice, hesitatingly. "I doubt my powers of being able to do anything good enough, but I shall be very glad to hear from you.”

At this moment only one thing in the world seemed to be of much real importance; it was that the man now sitting by her side should not be utterly taken away. To know that he existed, though far from her, would be almost enough, for would he not be to her a sort of beacon-light — a light she might never reach to, but which would break the darkness she dreaded? In no century have men been loved so implicitly by women as in the nineteenth; nor could this be otherwise, for putting aside the fact that the natural wants of love have become a nervous erethism in the struggle that a surplus population of more than two million women has created, there are psychological reasons that to-day more than ever impel women to shrink from the intellectual monotony of their sex, and to view with increasing admiration the free, the vigorous intelligence of the male. For as the gates of the harem are being broken down, and the gloom of the female mind clears, and grows keenly alive to the sensations and ideas of modern life, it becomes axiomatically sure that Woman brings a loftier reverence to the shrine of Man than she has done in any past age, seeing, as she now does, in him the incarnation of the freedom of which she is vaguely conscious and which she is perceptibly acquiring. So sets the main current that is bearing civilisation along; but beneath the great feminine tide there is an under-current of hatred and revolt. This is particularly observable in the leaders of the movement; women who in the tumult of their aspirations, and their passionate yearnings towards the new ideal, and the memory of the abasement their sex have been in the past, and are still being in the present, subjected to, forget the immutability of the laws of life, and with virulent virtue and protest condemn love — that is to say love in the sense of sexual intercourse — and proclaim a higher mission for woman than to be the mother of men: and an adjuvant, unless corrected by sanative qualities of a high order, is, of course, found in any physical defect. But as the corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments of Alice Barton and Lady Cecilia Cullen were examined fully in the beginning of this chapter, it is only necessary to here indicate the order of ideas — the moral atmosphere of the time — to understand the efflorescence of the two minds, and to realise how curiously representative they are of this last quarter of the nineteenth century.

And it was necessary to make that survey of psychical cause and effect to appreciate the sentiments that actuated Alice in her relationship with Harding. She loved him, but more through the imagination than the heart. She knew he was deceiving her, but to her he meant so much that she had not the force of will to cast him off, and abandoned herself to the intellectual sensualism of his society. It was this, and nothing more. What her love might have been it is not necessary to analyse; in the present circumstances, it was completely merged in the knowledge that he was, to her, light, freedom, and instruction, and that when he left, darkness and ignorance would again close in upon her. They had not spoken for some moments. With a cruelty that was peculiar to him, he waited for her to break the silence.

"And what will you do," she said, at last, "when you return to London?"

"You mean, what literary work shall I be engaged upon? I shall first of all finish off my articles on Ireland — ”

"I thought they were done long ago.”

"Yes, but I got an order from America — the Americans pay very well — for a series of descriptive sketches. I shall not be long knocking them off, and then I shall do some fiction.”

“What do you call descriptive sketches?”

“Well, my idea is to take a series of representative characters — the landlord, the grazier, the tenant farmer, the moonlighter, the parson, the priest — and tell their history, their manner of life, and their aims and ambitions. There are many curious and interesting things to be said — the last flicker of Protestantism, the gradual absorbing of the glebe lands, and the apparent triumph of Catholicism.”

"Then you think that Catholicism is likewise doomed?"

"Of course I do. The Roman Church is shattered to its base. Christ, if you will, was a radical, but the Church of Christ was built on conservative foundations, in comparison to which those of the House of Lords are socialistic, communistic, and every other ‘istic.’ Now, for the first time, we see the bishops of Rome waving the red flag of revolution. If a cat has nine, superstition has ninety-nine lives; but it is hardly credible that a Church that has existed eighteen hundred years through the vivifying power of one set of principles should be able to gain a new lease of life by the recanting of all its old opinions. The priests have to get their dues, and to get them they have to mount the Land League platform. The need of the moment is the greatest need of all.”

"And you think they will eventually die of the bread they are now eating?"

"Of course republicanism and common-sense will not put up with their nonsense for very long; and it is my firm belief that in fifty — say a hundred — years priests and parsons, in common with other fortune-tellers, will be prosecuted under the Vagrancy Acts.”

One of the many threads that drew Alice, fascinated, towards Harding was the quick flight of his thought, and the rapid and daring way in which he expressed it. She had sufficiently mastered the old weakness of belief, and she was not shocked but only a little startled at his utterances. Now she laughed softly, amused by the wit and epigrammatic force of his conversation.

Harding was not quite sincere. He spoke with a view to effect; he desired to astonish, and, if possible, to have the girl think of him when he was gone as something quite exceptional — something she would never see again. Alice’s thoughts, however, had passed from the literary souvenirs that he was pouring upon her, and she thought now of his departure, and the loneliness it would bring to her. Without seeking a transitional phrase, she raised her eyes to his and said unaffectedly:

"I am sorry you are going away: I am afraid we shall never meet again.”

"Oh, yes, we shall," he replied: "you’ll get married one of these days and come and live in London.”

"Why should I go to live in London?"

"Watch life as it flows and breaks about us: do you not see that man’s moral temperament leads him sooner or later back to his connatural home? And we must not confuse home with the place of our birth. There are Frenchmen born in England, Englishmen born in France. Heine was a Frenchman born in Germany — and you are a Kensingtonian. I see nothing Irish in you. Oh, you are very Kensington, and therefore you will — I do not know when or how, but assuredly as a stream goes to the river and the river to the sea, you will drift to your native place — Kensington. Your tastes will bring you there; you’ll be writing novels one of these days in Kensington, I wouldn’t mind betting.”

"I don’t like you to laugh at me.”

"I assure you I am not laughing at you. Have you not promised me to try your hand at an article or two and a short story, which I am going to get published for you?"

"Yes, I said I would try.”

"And you promise to write to me? — I shall be most interested to hear how you are getting on.”

"I shall have to write to you if I send you the story.”

"You might send it without a letter.”

"I should not be so rude as that, And, you must not forget, you promised to give me one of your books.”

"Yes, I’ll bring you one to-morrow. But do you know that I have left the hotel? There were too many people about to do much work, so I took rooms in Molesworth Street — there I can write and read undisturbed. You might come and see me.”

"I should like to very much, but I don’t think I could ask mother to come with me; she is so very busy just now.”

“Well, don’t ask your mother to come; you won’t be afraid to come alone?"

"I am afraid I could not do that.”

"Why not? No one will ever know anything about it.”

“Very possibly, but I don’t think it would be a proper thing to do — I don’t think it would be a right thing to do.”

"Right! I thought we had ceased to believe in heaven and hell.”

"Yes, but does that change anything? There are surely duties that we owe to our people, to our families. The present ordering of things may be unjust, but, as long as it exists, had we not better live in accordance with it?"

"A very sensible answer, and I suppose you are right.”

Alice looked at him in astonishment, but she was shaken too intensely in all her feelings to see that he was perfectly sincere, that his answer was that of a man who saw and felt through his intelligence and not his conscience.

The conversation had suddenly come to a pause, and the silence that intervened was full of nervous apprehension. Then it was broken by whispered words, and the abundant laughter that was seemingly used to hide the emotions that oppressed the speakers. Finally they sat down quite close to, but hidden from, Alice and Harding by a screen, and through the paper even their breathing was audible. All the dancers were gone; there was scarcely a white skirt or black coat in the pale blueness of the room. Evidently the lovers thought they were well out of reach of eavesdroppers, Alice felt this, but before she could rise to go, Fred Scully had said —

"Now, May, I hope you won’t refuse to let me come and see you in your room to-night. It would be too cruel if you did. I’ll steal along the passage; no one will hear, no one will ever know, and I’ll be so very good; I promise you I will.”

"Oh, Fred, I’m afraid I can’t trust you; it would be so very wicked.”

“Nothing is wicked when we really love; besides, I only want to talk to you.”

"You can talk to me here.”

"Yes, but it isn’t the same thing; anyone can talk to you here. I want to show you a little poem I cut out of a newspaper to-day for you. I’ll steal along the passage — no one will ever know.”

"You’ll promise to be very good, and you won’t stop more than five minutes.”

The words were spoken in low soft tones, exquisitely expressive of the overthrow of reason and the merging of all the senses in the sweet abandonment of passion.

Alice sat unable to move; she was trembling like a bird held to a man’s breast. At last, awakening with a pained look in her grey eyes, she touched Harding’s hand with hers, and, laying her finger on her lips, she arose. Their footfalls made no sound on the deep soft carpet; they stole away unperceived.

"This is very terrible," she murmured, half to herself.

Harding had too much tact to answer; and, taking advantage of the appearance of Violet Scully, who came walking gaily down the room on the Marquis’s arm, he said —

"Your friend Miss Scully seems to be in high spirits.”

Violet exchanged smiles with Alice as she passed. The smile was one of triumph. She had waltzed three times with the Marquis, and was now going to sit out a set of quadrilles.

"What a beautiful waltz the ‘Blue Danube’ is!" she said, leading her admirer to where the blue fans were numerous. Upon the glistening piano stood a pot filled with white azaleas; and, in the pauses of the conversation, you heard the glass of the chandeliers tinkling gently to the vibration of the music.

"It is a beautiful waltz when I am dancing it with you.”

"I am sure you say that to every girl you dance with.”

"No, I should not know how to say so to anyone but you," said the little man humbly; and so instinct were the words with truth that the girl, in the violence of her emotion, fancied her heart had ceased to beat.

"But you have not known me a fortnight," she answered involuntarily.

"But that doesn’t matter; the moment I saw you, I — I — liked you. It is so easy to know the people we — like; we know it at once; at least I do.”

She was more self-possessed than he, but the words "Am I — am I going to be a marchioness?" throbbed like a burning bullet sunk into the very centre of her forehead. And to maintain her mental equipoise she was forced, though by doing so she felt she was jeopardising her chances, to coquette with him. After a long silence she said —

"Oh, do you think we know at first sight the people we like? Do you believe in first impressions?"

"My first and last impressions of you are always the same. All I know is, that when you are present all things are bright, beautiful, and cheering, and when you are away I don’t much care what happens. Now, these Castle balls used to bore me to death last year; I used to go into a back room and fall asleep, but this year I am as lively as a kitten — I think I could go on for ever, and the Castle seems to me the most glorious place on earth. I used to hate it; I was as bad as Parnell, but not for the same reasons, of course. Now I am only afraid he will have his way, and they’ll shut the whole place up. Anyhow, even if they do, I shall always look back upon this season as a very happy time.”

"But you do not really think that Parnell will be allowed to have his way?" said Violet, inadvertently.

"I don’t know, I don’t take much interest in politics, but I believe things are going terribly to the bad. Dublin, they say, is undermined with secret societies, and the murder that was committed the other day in Sackville Street was the punishment they inflict on those whom they even remotely suspect of being informers."

"But don’t you think the Government will soon be obliged to step in and put an end to all this kind of thing?"

"I don’t know; I’m afraid they’ll do nothing until we landlords are all irretrievably ruined.”

Violet’s thin face contracted. She had introduced a subject that might prevent him from ever proposing to her. She knew how terribly the Kilcarney estates were mortgaged; and, even now, as she rightly conjectured, the poor little man was inwardly trembling at the folly it had been on his lips to speak. Three of his immediate ancestors had married penniless girls, and it was well-known that another love match would precipitate the property over that precipice known to every Irish landowner — the Encumbered Estates Court. But those exquisitely shapen temples, so exquisitely shaded with light brown tresses, that delicately moulded head — delicate as an Indian carven ivory, dispelled all shadows and fears and waxed the sole, the omnipotent and omnipresent desire of his life.

She thought not of the renunciation she was making of love and passion. Her mind was blank to all but one desire, and in the nervous sensitivity of the moment, will, conscious and unconscious, became one, and the violent emotion of expectancy produced the phenomenon of involuntary, although intelligent action. The girl obeyed an unconscious conception, that is to say an instinct, and uttered the precise words that the occasion demanded:

"But things never turn out as well or as badly as we expect them to.”

This facile philosophy went like wine to the little marquis’s head. He longed to throw himself at the feet of his goddess and thank her for the balm she had poured upon him. The gloom of approaching ruin disappeared, and he saw nothing in the world but a white tulle skirt, a thin foot, a thin bosom, and a pair of bright grey eyes. Vaguely he sought for equivalent words, but loud-talking dancers passed into the room. In arid and vulgar curiosity they stared at the couple sitting under the azaleas; and, abashed by their looks, the marquis broke off a flowering branch and said, stammering the while incoherently:

"Will you keep this in memory of this evening?"

Violet thrust the flowers into her bosom, and was about to thank him, when an A.D.C. came up and claimed her for the dance. Coldly she told him he was mistaken, that she was engaged; and, taking Lord Kilcarney’s arm, they made their way in silence back to the ball-room.

On the whole, Violet was satisfied; she felt now very sure of her marquis, and, as they approached Mrs. Scully, a quick glance said that things were going as satisfactorily as could be desired. Not daring to trust herself to the gossip of the chaperons, this excellent lady sat apart, maintaining the solitary dignity to which the Galway counter had accustomed her; and she received the marquis with the same smile as she used to bestow on her best customers. He sat beside Violet. They talked for a few minutes of the different aspects of the ball-room, of their friends, of things that did not interest them. Then she said winsomely, inflecting an accent of command that enchanted him:

"Now I want you to go and dance with someone else; let me see — what do you say to Olive Barton? If you don’t, I shall be in her mother’s black books for the rest of my life. Now go. We shall be at home to-morrow; you might come in for tea.”

The marquis declared he would be delighted, and, suffocated with secret joy, he made his way across the room to where Mrs. Barton was sitting. He was received with waves of the white hands and an abundance of laughter. Mrs. Barton was too wise to show her disappointment, and, cancelling a couple of Olive’s engagements, she sent her off to dance with him.

Violet sat by her mother, refusing all her partners; but, when "God save the Queen" was played, she accepted Lord Kilcarney’s arm, and they pressed forward to see the Lord-Lieutenant and Her Excellency pass down the room. Violet’s eyes feasted on the bowing black coats and light toilettes, and, leaning on her escutcheon, she dreamed vividly of the following year when she would take her place amid all these noble people, and, as high as they, stand a peeress on the dais. This moment of vision was the keenest pleasure in her life: and so ended the ball.

As the Bartons drove through the wet and forlorn streets of Dublin, Olive said:

"Did you notice, mamma, how often that beast of a girl, Violet Scully, danced with Lord Kilcarney?"

"I don’t think he danced oftener with her than he did with you, dear," Mi's. Barton answered, a little wearily. "It would not look well if he remained with you the whole night." And, weary of the racket of music, wine, and gaslight, the women gazed through the misted windows. The city lay mysteriously dead — immovable and mute beneath the moon, like a starved vagrant in the last act of a melodrama.

To be alone, to lie down, to forget. She had too much to think of; to-morrow she would think of it all, but now she was tired and wanted rest. But for Alice there was no rest that night. Her brain was on fire with what she had seen and heard. It seemed to her as if she had lived through a hundred years; and, as she lay under the sheets, all the old sorrows came as a river, rushing through the darkness. She was but a poor plain girl whom no one would ever marry, a poor plain girl who saw her little hopes wrecked daily before her despairing eyes, whose fine feelings were daily brutalised by those with whom she was, and would ever be, forced to live. And to think, to know — ah! yes, to know — that the world, the fair beauteous world, with all its adventures, possibilities, and achievements, would — must — remain to her for ever a blank; and through no fault of her own, but because she was but a poor plain girl whom no one would ever think of marrying!

Seen from afar all things in nature are of equal worth; and the nearest things, when viewed with the eyes of God, are raised to those heights of tragic awe which conventionality would limit to the death of kings or patriots. The history of a nation as often lies hidden in social wrongs and domestic griefs as in the story of revolution, and if it be for the historian to narrate the one, it is for the novelist to dissect and explain the other; and who would say which is of the most vital importance — the thunder of the people against the oppression of the Castle, or the unnatural sterility, the cruel idleness of mind and body of the muslin martyrs who cover with their white skirts the shames of Cork Hill?

Alice knew well that Harding would not marry her, but the knowledge did not lessen her terror of losing him, or her fear of the lonely monotony of girl-life that would again close in upon her. And to think that never, never, never, would any door of escape be open to her! And to think that the fair world with all its adventures and aspirations would never, never be known to her, would remain the thinnest of thin dreams. And why? But unlike the night when, before the snow-drowned plain, she cried out against the silence of spinsterhood and all its manifold meanings, she now thought she would be content if things could only remain unchanged. Before, she had demanded marriage as a right, but love was then an abstract passion, now it was a distinct desire possessing for her an intrinsic value. And little as it was characteristic of her to reproach, she now reproached him. Why, oh why, had he been so kind when he must have known from the beginning that all must end! and then, suddenly as lightning sears the face of night, a burning thought of May Gould tore the veil of grief.

✱ ✱ ✱

Was there no other way to retain your lover? Was Cecilia right, and did a man care for you for nothing else?

✱ ✱ ✱

Still what matter? May, at least, was not lonely and friendless; she, at least, would know what the rest of them might never know!

These thoughts were awakened into consciousness by the action of nervous passion; and, astonished, Alice raised her head, finding within herself no will for the idea. She buried her face in the pillow as if to escape from the impure thoughts with which she was unwittingly assailed.

✱ ✱ ✱

But, oh, the punishment and the shame! Her brain reeled. Oh, the terrible drama that was being enacted! How far away? Only a few yards: only a little lath and plaster separated them. Could nothing be done to save, to avert? Alas, nothing — always the same answer: she was only a plain gill who could do nothing but endure.