A Drama in Muslin — Book 1 Chapter 4

London: Vizetelly & Co., 1 June 1886, pages 52-72, 8,477 words

CHAPTER IV.

During the next three or four days, the girls’ life at Brook field settled down into certain grooves.

Now Alice knew that about half-past one o’clock she would hear the wheels of Lord Dungory’s carriage roll up to the hall-doors. Mrs. Barton would be dressed to receive him; the glass of sherry, the little table, the coaxing laughs, and the compliments would be all prepared and served out with automatic precision. Sometimes, however, they were interrupted by Captain Hibbert, who came riding over from Gort. Then Mrs. Barton would propose a walk in the shrubberies, and with surprising ease the old and the young couple fell in, and sympathised with each other’s habits. From her window Alice often saw them, and in fancy heard the crisp, courtly compliments of the portly, but tightly buttoned-up old lord, and the drawled-out platitudes of the tall and handsome captain.

And to these arrangements Mr. Barton paid no heed whatever. Immediately after breakfast he retired to his studio. When he was in painting-humour, the baritone voice roared in imitation of a lion; when he was in a musical mood, it shouted forth some old Italian air to the tinkling of the guitar. And the great room, with its strange pictures, its smell of tobacco, its litter of books and old newspapers — in a word, its air of candour, of idea — had for Alice, weary of the rest of the house, an indescribable fascination. Dearly she would have liked to have sat and talked, as he painted the story of the man-eater; but it distressed her to listen to the languid nonsense he spoke of his genius, and she noticed that, being now engaged on many nudities, her presence embarrassed him. It was, therefore, essential for her to discover how the hours might best be filled, and in which of the things within her reach she was most interested.

Mrs. Barton had decided that the young ladies were to have a maid to themselves; — a maid who, in a certain sense, would be a companion, and who could rearrange, and, if necessary, copy a dress from the original model. Barnes was not what would be imagined; she was a large woman of forty, but she concealed her age under a light, smiling manner. Generally she was to be found sewing in the room that had once been the nursery, but which had lately been refurnished, and converted into a kind of plain sitting-room — a workroom, where the young ladies were supposed to read, embroider, and write their letters. Once, Captain Hibbert, with many reprimands for his indiscretion, was brought up to see this feminine nook.

Barnes received him with smiles of recognition; smiles that said: Oh! of you, sir, I have heard much from my young ladies — Miss Olive in particular.

These insidious agreeabilities soon won the younger sister’s heart; and when not in the drawing-room with him, as he was now called, mistress and maid, the work-basket and the skirt of a dress between them, sat for hours whispering together. If Alice came into the room, the conversation came to a full stop, or lapsed into a series of giggles, or sometimes plucking up courage, and as if anxious to rid the room of her sister’s presence, Olive told how Barnes was going out next Sunday with her young man. Alice revolted against the odours of the kitchen, which these conferences exhaled, and she would steal away to walk about the grounds by herself, or in the fragrant shadows of the chestnut-trees, sit for hours absorbed in the lofty charms of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. They suited her present mood, and, until the day came when she was to meet Cecilia, she stood on ramparts with Amy Robsart, and, riding on palfreys, experienced all the passion and despair of Leicester’s great betrayal.

The girls had given each other rendezvous at the gate of Dungory Castle. Lover was never more anxious to meet mistress than this little deformed girl to see her friend; and Alice could see her walking hurriedly up and down the gravel sweep in front of the massive grey-stone Lodge.

"She will see me next time she turns," thought Alice, and immediately after Cecilia uttered a joyful cry and ran forward.

"Oh! so it is you, Alice. I am so glad. I thought you were going to disappoint me.”

"And why, dear, did you think I was going to disappoint you?" said Alice, stooping to kiss the wan, wistful face.

"I don’t know — I can’t say, but I fancied something would happen," (and the great brown eyes began to melt with tears of delight) — “I had, you know, set my heart on this walk with you.”

This confession of love was delicious.

"I am sure the pleasure is as much mine as yours; and now, whither lies our way?"

“Through the deer-park, through the oakwood, across the fields into the highroad, and then you are at the gate.”

"Won’t that be too far for you?”

"Oh, not at all; it is not more than a mile-and-a-half, but for you, you had to come another mile-and-a-half. It is fully that from here to Brookfield. But tell me, dear," said Cecilia, clinging to her friend’s arm, “why have you not been over to see me before? It is not kind of you; we have been home from school now over a fortnight, and, except on the night of the dinner-party, I haven’t seen you once.”

"I was coming over to see you last week, dear, but, to tell you the truth, mamma prevented me. I cannot think why, but somehow she does not seem to care that I should go to Dungory Castle. But for the matter of that, why did you not come and see me? I have been expecting you every day. Why haven’t you been?”

"I couldn’t come either. My sisters advised me — I mean, insisted on my stopping at home.”

"And why?”

"I really can’t say," replied Cecilia.

And now Alice knew the Ladies Cullen hated Mrs. Barton for her intimacy with Lord Dungory. Shrinking with shame, she longed to talk the matter out, but dared not; while Cecilia regretted she had spoken; for, with the quickness of the deformed, she knew that Alice had divined the truth of the family feud. The silence was irritating, and then, with their parasols slanting to the west, they talked of indifferent things.

The sun fell like lead upon the short grass of the deer-park, and the frizzled heads of the hawthorns. On the right, the green masses of the oakwood shut in the view, and the stately red-deer, lolling their high necks, marched away through the hillocks, as if offended at their solitude being disturbed. One poor crippled hind walked with a wretched sidling movement, and Alice hoped Cecilia would not notice it, lest it should remind her of her own misfortune.

"I am sure," she said, "we never knew finer weather than this in England. I don’t think there could be finer weather, and still they say the tenants are worse off than ever; that no rent at all, at least nothing above Griffith’s valuation, will be paid.”

"Do they speak much of Griffith’s valuation at Dungory Castle?”

"Oh! they never cease, and — and — I don’t know whether I ought to say, but it won’t matter with you? I suppose — mind, you must not breathe a word of this at Brookfield — the fact is my sister’s school — you know they have a school, and go in for trying to convert the people — well, this has got papa into a great deal of trouble. The Bishop has sent down another priest — I think they call it a mission — and we are going to be preached against, and papa received a threatening letter this morning. He is going, I believe, to apply for police.”

"And is this on account of the proselytising?”

"Oh! no, not entirely; he has refused to give his tenants Griffith’s valuation; but it makes one very unpopular to be denounced by the priest. I assure you, papa is very angry. He told Sarah and Jane this morning at breakfast that he’d have no more of it; that they had no right to go into the poor people’s houses and pull the children from under the beds, and ask why they were not at school; that he didn’t care of what religion they were as long as they paid the rent; and that he wasn’t going to have his life endangered for such nonsense. There was an awful row at home this morning. For my own part, I must say I sympathise with papa. Besides the school, Sarah has, you know, a shop, where she sells bacon, sugar, and tea at cost price, and it is well-known that those who send their children to the school will never be asked to pay their bills. She wanted me to come and help to weigh out the meal, Jane being confined to her room with a sick headache, but I got out of it. I would not, if I could, convert those poor people. You know, I often fancy — I mean fear — I often sympathise too much with your creed. It was only at service last Sunday I was thinking of it; our religion seems so cold, so cheerless compared to yours. You remember the convent-church at St. Leonards — the incense, the vestments, the white-veiled congregation — oh, how beautiful it was; we shall never be so happy again!”

"Yes, indeed; and how cross we used to think those dear nuns. You remember Sister Mary, how she used to lecture Violet for getting up to look out of the windows. What used she to say? ‘Do you want, miss, to be taken for a housemaid or scullery-maid, staring at people in that way as they pass?’”

"Yes, yes; that’s exactly how she used to speak," exclaimed Cecilia, laughing. And, as the girls advanced through the oakwood, they helped each other through the briers and over the trunks of fallen trees, talking, the while, of their past life, which now seemed to them but one long, sweet joy. A reference to how May Gould used to gallop the pony round and round the field at the back of the convent was interrupted by the terrifying sound of a cock-pheasant getting up from some bracken under their very feet; and, amid the scurrying of rabbits in couples and half-dozens, modest allusion was made to the girls who had been expelled in ‘75. Absorbed in the sweetness of the past, the girls mused, until they emerged from the shade of the woods into the glare and dust of the highroad. Then came a view of rocky country, with harvesters working in tiny fields, and then the great blue background of the Clare Mountains was suddenly unfolded. A line and a bunch of trees indicated the Brennan domain. The gate-lodge was in ruins, and the weed-grown avenue was covered with cowdung.

"Which of the girls do you like best? said Alice, who wished to cease thinking of the poverty in which the spinsters lived.

“Emily, I think; she does not say much, but she is more sensible than the other two. Gladys wearies me with her absurd affectations; Zoe is well enough, but what names!”

"Yes, Emily has certainly the best of the names," Alice replied, laughing.

"Are the Miss Brennans at home? " said Cecilia, when the maid opened the hall-door.

"Yes, miss — I mean your ladyship — will you walk in?”

"You’ll see, they’ll keep us waiting a good half-hour while they put on their best frocks," said Cecilia, as she sat down in a faded armchair in the middle of the room. A piano was rolled close against the wall, the two rosewood cabinets were symmetrically placed on either side of the further window; from brass rods the thick, green curtains hung in stiff folds, and, since the hanging of some water-colours, done by Zoe before leaving school, no alterations, except the removal of the linen covers from the furniture when visitors were expected, had been made in the arrangement of the room.

The Brennan family consisted of three girls — Gladys, Zoe, and Emily. Thirty-three, thirty-one, and thirty were their respective ages. Their father and mother, dead some ten or a dozen years, had left them joint proprietors of a small property of seven hundred a year. Gossip had magnified this to three thousand, and they were, therefore, known as the heiresses of Kinavarah. All three were dumpty and dark, and in snub-noses and blue eyes their Celtic blood was easily recognisable. Every year they went to spend a month at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, and they returned with quite a little trousseau. Gladys and Zoe always dressed alike, from the bow round the neck to the bow on the little shoe that they so artlessly withdrew when in the presence of gentlemen. Gladys’ formula for receiving visitors never varied:

"Oh, how do you do — it is really too kind of you to give yourself all this trouble to come and see us.”

Immediately after Zoe put out her hand. Her manner was more jocose:

"How d’ye do? We are, I am sure, delighted to see you, will you have a cup of tea? I know you will.”

Emily, being considered too shy and silent, did not often come down to receive company. On her devolved the entire management of the house and servants; the two elder sisters killed time in the way they thought would give least offence to their neighbours.

Being all St. Leonard’s girls, the conversation immediately turned on convent-life. “Was madame this there? Had madame that left? Garden, chapel, school, hall, dormitory, refectory were visited; every nun was passed in review, and, in the lightness and gaiety of the memories invoked, even the wrinkling faces of the spinsters flushed and looked fresh again. Then, sighing, they recalled the hopes that had withered, and the conversation came to a pause.

Allusion was made to the disturbed state of the country, and to a gentleman who, it was reported, was going to be married. But, as Alice did not know the person whose antecedents were being called into question, she took an early opportunity of asking Gladys if she cared for riding? “No, they never went to ride now: they used to, but they came in so fatigued that they could not talk to Emily; so they had given up riding." Did they care for driving? “Yes, pretty well; but there was no place to drive to except into Gort, and as people had been unjust enough to say that they were always to be seen in Gort, they had given up driving; unless, of course, they went to call on friends." Then tea was brought in; and, apropos of a casual reference to conventual buttered toast, the five girls talked, until nearly six o’clock, of their girlhood — of things that would never have any further influence in their lives, of happiness they would never experience again. At last Alice and Cecilia pleaded that they must be getting home.

As they walked across the fields, the girls only spoke occasionally. Alice strove to see clear, but her thoughts were clouded, scattered, diffused. Force herself as she would, still no conclusion seemed possible; all was vague and contradictory. She had talked to these Brennans, seen how they lived, could guess what their past was, what their future must be. In that neat little house, their uneventful life dribbled away in maiden idleness; neither hope nor despair broke the cruel triviality of their days — and yet, was it their fault? No; for what could they do if no one would marry them? — a woman could do nothing without a husband. There is a reason for the existence of a pack-horse, but none for that of an unmarried woman. She can achieve nothing — she has no duty but, by blotting herself out, to shield herself from the attacks of ever-slandering friends. Alice had looked forward to a husband and a home as the certain accomplishment of years; now she saw that a woman, independently of her own will, may remain single.

"I wonder," she said, forgetting for the moment she was speaking to Cecilia, “I wonder none of those Brennans get married; you can’t call them ugly girls, and they have some money. How dreadfully lonely they must be living there by themselves!”

"I think they are far happier as they are," said Cecilia, and her brown eyes set in liquid-blue looked strangely at Alice as she helped her over the low wall. The girls walked in silence through the tomb-like stillness of the silver-firs; and their thoughts were sharp as the needles that scratched the pale sky. Cecilia continued:

"It may seem odd of me to say so — of course I would not say this to anyone but you — but I assure you, even if I were as nice as you are, dear, nothing would induce me to marry. I never took the slightest pleasure in any man’s conversation, and the idea — Oh! it seems to me too revolting, and we make so little of ourselves. Now at home it never ceases. Jane asks papa if he has seen the So-and-sos, and immediately Sarah chimes in: ‘Well, they have been going out a long time now, and they don’t seem to be pulling off anything. I never believed in her flirtation with such a man; they did their very best to hook him, but it was no go, he slipped through their fingers,’ etc. Don’t you agree with me, Alice? But no, I know you don’t," she said, breaking off suddenly — "I know you like men; I feel you do. Don’t you?”

"Well, since you put it so plainly, I confess I should like to know nice men. I do not care for those I have met hitherto, particularly those I saw at dinner the other night; but I believe there are nice men in the world.”

"Oh! no there aren’t.”

“Well, Cecilia, I don’t see how you can speak so positively as that; you have seen as yet very little of the world.”

“Ahl yes, but I know it; I can guess it all, I know it instinctively, and I hate it.”

"There is nothing else, so we must make the best of it.”

"But there is something else — there is God, and the love of beautiful things. I spent all day yesterday playing Bach’s Passion music, and the hours passed like a dream until my sisters came in from walking and began to talk about marriage and men. It made me feel sick — it was horrible; and it is such things that make me hate life — and I do hate it; it is the way we are brought back to earth, and forced to realise how vile and degraded we are. Society seems to me no better than a pigsty; but in the beautiful convent — that we shall, alas! never see again — it was not so. There, at least, life was pure — yes, and beautiful. Do you not remember that beautiful white church with all its white pillars and statues, and the dark-robed nuns, and the white-veiled girls, their veils falling from their bent heads? They often seemed to me like angels. I am sure that Heaven must be very much like that — pure, desireless, contemplative.”

Amazed, Alice looked at her friend; she had never heard her speak like this before. But Cecilia did not see her; the prominent eyes of the mystic were veiled with strange glamour, and, with divine gourmandise, she savoured the ineffable sweetness of the vision, and as the sensuality of her nature revolted against the warmth of a lover’s kiss, it yielded to the cold aisle made lovely with the white body of God set in gold above the distant altar. After a long silence, she said:

"I often wonder, Alice, how you can think as you do; and, strange to say, no one suspects that you are an unbeliever; you are so good in all except that one point.”

"But surely, dear, it is not a merit to believe; it is hardly a thing that we can call into existence.”

"You should pray for faith.”

"I don’t see how I can pray if I have not faith.”

"Oh! you argue too well for me. You are too clever; but I would ask you, Alice — you never told me — did you never believe in God, I mean when you were a little child?”

"I suppose I must have, but, as well as I can remember, it was only in a very half-hearted way; much as I believed in hobgoblins. Belief never touched me. I could never quite bring myself to credit that there was a Being far away, sitting behind a cloud, who kept his eye on all the different worlds, and looked after them just as a stationmaster looks after the arrival and departure of trains from some huge terminus.”

"Alice! how can you talk so? Are you not afraid that something awful might happen to you for talking of the Creator of all things in that way?”

"Why should I be afraid, and why should that Being, if he exists, be angry with me for my sincerity? If he is all powerful, it rests with Himself to make me believe.”

They had now accomplished the greater part of then’ journey, and, a little tired, had sat down to rest on a portion of a tree left by the woodcutters. Gold rays slanted through the glades, enveloping and rounding off the tall smooth trunks that rose branchless to a height of thirty, even forty, feet; and the pink clouds, seen through the arching dome of green, were vague as the picture on some dim cathedral-roof.

"In places like these, I wonder you don’t feel God’s presence.”

"On the contrary, the charm of nature is broken when you introduce a ruling official.”

"Alice! how can you — you who are so good — speak in that way?” At that moment a dead leaf rustled through the silence — "And do you think that we shall die like that leaf? That, like it, we shall become a part of the earth and be forgotten as utterly?”

"I am afraid I do. That frail, fluttering thing was once a bud; it lived the summer-life of a leaf: now it will decay through the winter, and perhaps the next, until it finally becomes part of the earth. Everything in nature I see pursuing the same course; why should I imagine myself an exception to the general rule?”

"What, then, is the meaning of life?”

"Alas! we know nothing; we are perhaps no more than a lot of flies struggling in a water-jug. It is a very cruel creed. The sense of annihilation is a black, a heavy burden to bear, and no one will ever know what I have suffered. I am isolated from the rest of the world. At home I am like a stranger; I have not a thought in common with anyone.”

"Alice, you must not cry. Am I not your friend? Yes, I am more than a friend; I cannot tell you how I love you; I do not know myself, and I often feel afraid of my love, so strange does it seem.”

"Oh! yes, Cecilia, I know you love me, and I am thankful that I have such a friend; without you I should not be able to bear up.”

And, their souls longing for storms, tears, relief, effusion, the girls threw their arms round each other’s necks and wept.

This outburst of feeling had long been preparing; for days it had lain aching on their hearts. After their convent — where, in an atmosphere of general sympathy, flower-like their lives had grown — the girls had found the world cold and heartrending, and, in the severance of ties, nought but their friendship had remained. Alice had accepted it at first from pity, and then had abandoned herself, overcome by the power of an all giving love. But they who can always accept, think little of the worth; and until now she had not even dreamed the meaning of it. A moment of effusion had revealed it. Words were unnecessary, and, intent on their happiness, absorbed in the dolorous felicities of their sensations, the girls walked onward in silence. Ideas evaporated like perfumes, and only the short sharp cry of a bird broke the mild calm of the woods.

"Now, Alice," said Cecilia, when they reached the turning that made parting inevitable, and there was something of the passion of the lover in her voice, “promise me you will come and see me soon again. You will not leave me so long, you will write; I shall not be able to live if I do not hear from you.”

At that moment the sound of horse-hoofs was heard, and a pair of cream-coloured ponies, with a florid woman driving determinedly, came sweeping round the corner.

"What a strange person!” said Alice, watching the blue veil and the brightly-dyed hair.

"Don't you know who she is?” said Cecilia; “that is your neighbour, Mrs. Lawler.”

“Oh! is it really? I have been so long at school that I know nobody — I have been anxious to see her. Why, I wonder, do people speak of her so mysteriously?”

"You must surely have heard that she is not visited?

“Well, yes; but I did not quite understand. Your father was saying something the other day about Mr. Lawler’s shooting-parties; then mamma looked at him; he laughed and spoke of ‘les colombes de Cythère.' I intended to ask mamma what he meant, but somehow I forgot.”

"She is one of those… they call them bad women; women that men give money to and disgrace. In the towns they walk about the streets by night.’’

"Oh! really! said Alice; and the conversation came to a sudden pause. They had never spoken upon such a subject before, and the presence of the deformed girl rendered it a doubly painful one. In her embarrassment, Alice said:

"Then I wonder Mr. Lawler married her. Was it his fault that — ?”

"Oh! I don’t think so," Cecilia replied, scornfully: “but what does it matter? — she was quite good enough for him. Men are always the worst.”

Alice did not dare to pursue the conversation. At every moment a new Cecilia was revealing herself, the existence of whom Alice had not even suspected in the old. She knew that she herself was altered, that the last few weeks had taught her much, had strangely modified her ideas of life and things, but this was nothing to the transformation she thought she perceived in her friend. In reality Cecilia was the least changed. In her case circumstances had developed nothing; it had merely unveiled a state of soul that had existed for years in its present condition; and Alice, as she hurried home, wondered if the minds of the other girls were the same as they were at school. She confessed she could see but little change in her sister: May she had scarcely spoken to since they left school, and Violet she had not met since they parted at Athenry for their different homes. When she entered the house she heard Olive talking:

"He said, mamma, that I would be the handsomest girl at the drawing-room.”

"And what did you say, dear?”

"I asked him how he knew; was that right?”

"Quite right, and what did he say then?”

"He said, because he had never seen anybody so handsome, and as he had seen everybody in London, he supposed — I forget the exact words, but they were very nice, I am sure he admired my new hat; but you — you haven’t told me how you liked it. Do you think I should wear it down on my eyes, or a bit back?”

"I think it very becoming as it is; but tell me more about Captain Hibbert.”

"He told me he was coming to meet us at mass; you know he is a Roman Catholic.”

"I know he is, dear, and am very glad."

"If he weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to meet us at mass."

At this proof of the superiority of Catholic over other forms of worship Mrs. Barton laughed, and, when Alice came downstairs, the Captain Hibbert discussion was being continued in the studio. According to old-established custom, on the arrival of his family, Arthur had turned his nudities to the wall, and now sitting, one leg tucked under him, on the sofa, throwing back from time to time his long blonde locks, he hummed an Italian air.

"Why, Alice," said Mrs. Barton, “how tired you look, dear! Will you have a cup of tea? it will freshen you up, you have been walking yourself to death.”

"Thanks, mamma, I will have a cup of tea; Cecilia and I went to see the Brennans.”

"And are any of them going to be married yet? said Olive.

"I really don’t know; I didn’t ask them.”

“Well, they ought to be doing something with themselves; they have been trying it on long enough. They have been going up to the Shelbourne for the last ten years. Did they show you the dresses they brought down this season? They haven’t worn them yet — they keep them wrapped up in silver paper.”

Amazed, Alice looked at her sister; whence had come this flow of bitter gossiping?

“And how did you hear all that?"she asked.

"Oh! one hears everything: I don’t live with my nose buried in a book like you. That was all very well in the convent.”

"But what have I done that you should speak to me in that way?”

"Now, Alice dear,"said Mrs. Barton, coaxingly, “don’t get angry. I assure you Olive didn’t mean it.”

"No, indeed, I did not," exclaimed the corn-coloured girl, holding her sister by the arms and forcing her back into the chair.

Arthur’s attention, however, had been too deeply absorbed in the serenade in “Don Pasquale," to give heed to the feminine bickering with which his studio was ringing, until he was startled suddenly from his musical dreaming by an angry exclamation from his wife.

The picture of the bathers, which Alice had seen begun, had been only partially turned to the wall, and Mrs. Barton had caught sight of one of the faces of the women. After examining it for a few moments, she got up, and, without a word, she seized the picture. Olive uttered a cry, and, looking terrified, Arthur broke off in the middle of a bar. The two naked creatures who were taking a dip in the quiet, sunlit pool were Olive and Mrs. Barton; and, so grotesque were the likenesses, that Alice could not refrain from laughing.

"This is monstrous! this is disgraceful, sir; how often have I forbidden you to paint my face on any of your shameless pictures?” exclaimed Mrs. Barton, purple with rage; “and your daughter too — and just as she is coming out! Do you want to ruin us? I should like to know what anyone would think if — “ and, unable to complete her sentence, either mentally or aloud, Mrs. Barton wheeled the easel, on which the larger picture stood, into the full light of the window.

If Arthur had wounded the susceptibilities of his family before, he had outraged them now. The great woman, who had gathered to her bosom one of the doves her naked son, Cupid, had knocked out of the trees with his bow and arrow, was Olive. The white face and its high nose, beautiful as a head by Canova is beautiful; the corn-like tresses, piled on the top of the absurdly small head, were, beyond mistaking, Olive. Mrs. Barton stammered for words; Olive burst into tears.

"Oh! papa, how could you disgrace me in that way? Oh! I am disgraced! there’s no use in my going to the drawing-room now.”

"My dear, my dear, I assure you I can change it with a flick of the brush," said the blond delinquent; admiration carried away by idea — I promise you I’ll change it.”

"Come away, Olive, come away," said Mrs. Barton, casting a look of burning indignation at her husband. “If you cry like that, Olive, you won’t be fit to be looked at, and Captain Hibbert is coming here to-night.”

When they had left the room, Arthur looked inquiringly at Alice.

"This is very disagreeable," he said; “I really didn't think the likeness was so marked as all that; I assure you I didn’t. I must do something to alter it — I might change the colour of the hair; but no, I can’t do that, the entire scheme of colour depends upon that. It is a great pity, for it is one of my best things; the features I might alter, and yet it is very hard to do so, without losing the character. I wonder if I were to make the nose straighter — Alice, dear, would you mind turning your head this way?”

“Oh! no, no, no, papa dear! you aren’t going to put my face upon it;” and she ran smothered with laughter from the room.

When this little quarrel was over and done, when Arthur had altered, beyond recognition, the faces in his picture, and Olive had ceased to consider herself a disgraced girl, the allusion that had been made to Mass as a means of meeting Captain Hibbert remained like a sting in Alice’s memory. It surprised her at all sorts of odd moments, and often forced her, under many different impulses of mind, to reconsider the religious problem more passionately and intensely than she had ever done before. She asked herself if she had ever believed? Perhaps in very early youth, in a sort of vague, half-hearted way she had taken for granted the usual traditional ideas of heaven and hell, but even then, she remembered, she used to wonder how it was that time was found for everything else but God. If he existed it seemed to her that monks and nuns, or puritans of the sternest type, were alone in the right. And yet she couldn’t quite feel that they were right. She had always been intensely conscious of the grotesque contrast be tween a creed like that of the Christian, and having dancing and French lessons, and going to garden-parties, yes, and making wreaths and decorations for churches at Christmas-time. If one only believed, and had but a shilling, surely the only logical way of spending it was to give it to the poor, or a missionary — and yet nobody seemed to think so. Priests and bishops did not do so, she herself did not want to do so; still, so long as Alice believed, she was unable to get rid of the idea. Teachers might say what they pleased, but the creed they taught spoke for itself, and prescribed an impossible ideal, an unsatisfactory ideal which aspired to no more than saving oneself after all.

This represents the religious struggle that had filled Alice’s mind from her twelfth to her sixteenth year. Then a few books read: Darwin on the origin of Species, a History of the French Revolution, Byron, Shelley’s Satires on the absurdity of Revelation, the Immaculate Conception, and belief in God, an all-seeing, all-powerful, and Eternal Governor of the Universe, burst, like a wind-filled bladder under the point of a pin. How, then, with this rectitude of soul, had she consented to live so many years conforming outwardly to all the tenets of a religion which she recognised as an absurdity? The explanation of this seeming anomaly is found in the last line of the preceding paragraph: “An unsatisfactory ideal, which aspires to no more than saving oneself after all." In every nature there is a dominating force, which decides victory or defeat on all occasions. In Alice, this took the form of supreme unselfishness; she could not — it was impossible for her to do or say anything — when, by so doing, she knew she might cause suffering, or give pain to anyone, even an enemy. And it was this defect in Alice Barton’s character that forced her pitilessly, against any will of her own, to enact, to live up to what she deemed a lie. Often she had longed, and longed again, until she was sick with grief and longing, to tell the truth and be saved the mummery of attending at Mass, of bowing her head at the elevation of the Host. But when she realised the consternation, the agony of mind, it would cause the nuns she loved, she held back the word — cowardly, treacherously if you will; but it was this treachery — this imperfection, that linked her to and made her of the same nature as the four other heroines of this story. Cecilia alone had guessed the truth, and, at the first hint, Alice had told her all. The confession was a supreme relief; but, while unable to accept the counsel to ruthlessly break the oneness of their lives, she had hoped, she had looked forward to acting independently, and living an individual life at home. But at home, as in the convent, her resolution failed her. Her courage sank in the terrible and chilling tides of loneliness that surged about her; and the ever-present sense of mental separateness frightened her from all confidences. Since she had been at home, all her ideas and sensations had received violent contradiction; not one of the many practical rectitudes of which she had so fondly dreamed, had been found; and, therefore, in the brutal overthrow and wreck of so many illusions and hopes, her religious convictions and projects had been more than usually forgotten.

But they had again become the acute strain in this symphony of suffering; and now the weekly exhibition of best clothes, silk hats, carriages, gravity, collectedness, public proof of the world’s unworldliness: proof that all, no matter what the facts said, did possess an ideal, horrified this straight-souled girl, until she felt the life she was leading as a leprosy upon her. Twenty times she had determined to speak to her mother, twenty times something had occurred to prevent her. Friday and Saturday went by, and, as the hour approached when they should go to Mass to meet Captain Hibbert, the desire to say that her going to chapel was but a mockery, and to beg to be allowed to stay away, grew almost irresistible. It was only a foolish fear that such a declaration might interfere with her sister’s prospects that stayed the words as they rose to her lips; and at last, her gloves on and prayer-book in hand, she found herself packed into the brougham, watching the expressionless church-going faces of her family. From afar the clanging of a high swinging bell was heard, and the harsh reverberations travelling over the rocky townlands summoned the cottagers to God. The stone pillars of the chapel-gateway stared with bright yellow proclamations. The tenant-farmers were called upon to assemble by thousands and assert their rights. Landlordism and land-grabbing must be put down. Messrs. I.M. Brady, M.P., Matthew Hagan, and P. Flanagan would address the meeting.

The roadway was filled with young peasants in frieze coats and pot-hats; they stood in silent groups, or leaned in lines along the low wall that marked the precincts of the chapel. A look of quiet cunning overspread their faces, and showed that they guessed the annoyance the Land League proclamation would cause the gentry. Here and there was seen an old man in a traditional tail-coat and knee-breeches, walking apart, mumbling his toothless gums, evidently as incapable of thinking as of dressing up to the ideas of the present generation. And, mimicking modesty, came the girls — thick, short, fit for work in the fields; some with rosy cheeks, nice, with their shawls folded about their shoulders, their hair drawn into a knot, and tied with a ribbon at the back of their heads; others like nothing at all, in cheap millinery bought in the county-towns — shapeless hats with ostrich feathers of nameless hues — formless mantles. There was no giggling; only the very shyest glance to see if their boys were near. The bell continued to clang, and the servants from the different gentlemen’s establishments passed in; they were a class in themselves, and were sleek, cringing, bashful under the public gaze.

"Now, Arthur — do you hear? — you mustn’t look at those horrid papers!“ Mrs. Barton whispered to her husband; we must pretend not to see them. I wonder how Father Shannon can allow such a thing, making the house of God into — into I don’t know what, for the purpose of preaching robbery and murder. Just look at the country-people, how sour and wicked they look — don’t they, Alice?”

"Well, I don't know that they do, mamma," said Alice, who had already begun to see something wrong in each big house being surrounded by a hundred small ones, all working to keep it in sloth and luxury.

"I don’t know how it is, you always contradict me, and you seem to take pleasure in holding opinions that no one else does.”

Then they entered a large whitewashed building. In the middle of the earthen floor there was a stone basin filled with water, into which each person dipped a hand, and therewith blessed themselves.

A plaster angel knelt at each side of the altar; the chancel-window was made out of extensive squares of yellow and green glass, which, coming against the raw glare of whitewash, had a hideous effect. On the left-hand side, next to the communion-rails, half-a-dozen prie-Dieu and cushions had been set; and this one trace of comfort and aristocracy had a pert and curious look in this very rural church.

"Goodness me!" said Olive, “who in the world can those people be in our pew?”

Mrs. Barton trembled a little. Had the peasants seized the religious possessions of their oppressors? Dismissing the suspicion, she examined the backs indicated by Olive.

"Why, my dear, it is the Goulds; what can have brought them all this way?”

"I don’t know; but isn’t it nice of them to come?” The expected boredom of the service was forgotten, and Olive shook hands warmly with Mrs. Gould and May.

“Why, you must have driven fifteen miles; where are your horses?”

“We took the liberty of sending the carriage on to Brookfield, and we are coming on to lunch with you; that is to say, if you will let us?” cried May.

"Of course, of course; but how nice of you!”

“Ohl we have such news; but it was courageous of us to come all this way. Have you seen those terrible proclamations?”

"Indeed we have. Just fancy a priest allowing his chapel to be turned into a political — political what shall I call it?”

"Bear-garden," suggested May.

"And Father Shannon is going to take the chair at the meeting; he wouldn’t get his dues if he didn’t.”

"Hush, hush! they may hear you; but you were saying something about news.”

"Oh! don’t ask me," said Mrs. Gould; “that’s May’s affair — such work!”

"Say quickly! what is it, May?”

"Look here, girls, I can’t explain everything now; but we are going to give a ball; that is to say, all the young girls are going to subscribe. It will only cost us about three pounds apiece — that is to say, if we can get forty subscribers — we have got twenty already, and we hope you will join us. It is going to be called the spinsters’ ball. But there is such a lot to be done; the supper to be got together, the decorations of the room (splendid room, the old schoolhouse, you know). We are going to ask you to let us take Alice away with us.”

The conversation was here interrupted by the appearance of the priest, a large fat man, whose new, thick-soled boots creaked terribly as he ascended the steps of the altar. He was preceded by two boys dressed in white and black surplices. They rang little brass bells furiously, and immediately a great trampling of feet was heard. The peasants came, coughing and grunting with monotonous, animal-like voices; and the sour odour of cabin-smoked frieze arose, and was almost visible in the great beams of light that poured through the eastern windows; and whiffs of unclean leather, mingled with a smell of a sick child, flaccid as the prayer of the mother who grovelled, beating her breast, before the third Station of the Cross; and Olive and May, exchanging looks of disgust, drew forth cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, and in unison the perfumes of white rose and eau d’opoponax evaporated softly.

Alice watched the ceremony of Mass, and the falseness of it jarred upon her terribly. The mumbled Latin, the by-play with the wine and water, the mumming of the uplifted hands, were so appallingly trivial, and, worse still, all realisation of the idea seemed impossible to the mind of the congregation. Passing by, without scorn, the belief that the white wafer the priest held above his head, in this lonely Irish chapel, was the Creator of the twenty millions of suns in the Milky Way, she mused on the faith as exhibited by those who came to worship, and that which would have, which must have, inspired them, were Christianity now, as it once was, a burning, a vital force in the world. Looking round, what did she see? Here, at her elbow, were the gentry. How elegantly they prayed, with what refinement! Their social position was as manifest in their religion as in their homes, their language, their food. The delicate eyelids were closed from time to time; the long slim fingers held the gilt missals with the same well-bred grace as they would a fan; their thoughts would have passed from one to the other without embarrassment. Clearly they considered one the complement of the other. At the Elevation, the delicate necks were bowed, and, had lovers been whispering in their ears, greater modesty could not have been shown.

They had come to be in the absolute presence of God, the Distributor of Eternal rewards and punishments — and yet they had taken advantage of this stupendous mystery to meet for the purpose of arranging the details of the ball.

The peasantry filled the body of the church. They prayed coarsely, ignorantly, with the same brutality as they lived. Just behind Alice a man groaned. He cleared his throat with loud guffaws: she listened to hear the saliva fall: it splashed on the earthen floor. Further away a circle of dried and yellowing faces bespoke centuries of damp cabins, brutalising toil, occasional starvation. They moaned and sighed, a prey to the gross superstition of the moment. One man, bent double, beat a ragged shirt with a clenched fist; the women of forty, with cloaks drawn over their foreheads and trailing on the ground in long black folds, crouched until only the lean hard-worked hands that held the rosary were seen over the bench-rail. The young men stared arrogantly, wearied by the length of the service.

They, too, had come to be in the absolute presence of God — the Distributor of Eternal rewards and punishments — and yet they had taken advantage of the occasion of this stupendous mystery to meet for the purpose of arranging a land meeting.

Alice was troubled, as if by the obscure sensations of a nightmare. Surely, if their belief — gentry and peasants, she put them together — was not a mockery, a mere familiar usage, they could not be so indifferent as they were. If they did realise that the white wafer was God — God the Creator! before whom all things are nothing — something more full of meaning, more worthy than this little Sunday mummery would be the result. The early Christians, forgetting their food, had died in starving ecstasy in the desert! Then Alice felt, more calmly than she had ever done before, that what she was now witnessing was but the dust of an old-world faith, the sweeping away of which had only been delayed because a man is idle, and “loves to lie abed in the unclean straw of his intellectual habits.”

Soon after came the sermon — to Alice an incomprehensible jargon of ideas. The Ladies Cullen were denounced for proselytising. Instances were given: they had pursued one poor boy until he took refuge in an empty house, the door of which he was fortunately enabled to fasten against them; they had sent a sick woman blankets, in which they had not neglected to enclose some tracts; tracts that declared that reading the Bible — the Bible being admittedly the word of God — must be the way to know Him. Amateur shopkeeping, winter clothing, wood, turf, presents of meal, wine, and potatoes were all vigorously attacked as the wiles of the Evil One to lead the faithful from the true Church.

In the frieze-clad crowd, the tall, thin young man, in broad cloth, probably a Land League organiser, ground his teeth as the priest spoke. Evidently he saw political capital in what was being said, and was turning it over in his mind, thinking how he could make use of it at the meeting. The gentry bent their heads meekly, seeing only, in the denunciation of proselytising, another stick being handed to the national party, with which the landlords would be attacked.

At last it was all over. The peasants tramped away to the meeting where they would lay claim to the land that they tilled; the young ladies would soon return to their fine house to consider the skirts they would wear at the ball; and the house of God, the plea that had brought together so many conflicting interests, would remain forlorn and forgotten for another week. As they walked out of chapel catechism-classes were being formed, and, looking into the future, Alice saw from the new seed only a scantier harvesting than that she had just witnessed, sprung from a similar semination, but in a less-impoverished soil.

A circle of children was formed; a big boy or girl stood in the middle, and he or she put the questions.

"Who made the world?”

"God made the world!”

"Who is God?”

"God is the Creator and Sovereign Lord of Heaven, and earth, and all things.”

“How many Gods are there?

"There is but one God, who will reward the just and punish the wicked," etcetera, etcetera.