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

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

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

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

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

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

'Dead?'

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

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

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

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

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

'Indeed you are, dear.'

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

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

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

'I promise.'

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

'And what did you do?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Going to marry you?'

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

'And have you told mother about this?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



XXV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Who are you? Let me pass.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'With Teddy!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Let me help you up.'

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

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



XXVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Reed was announced.

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

'Can I see her foot?'

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

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

'Who on earth is this?' cried Mrs. Barton. 'Alice, will you go and see? Say that I am engaged, and can attend to nothing now.'

When Alice returned to the bedside she drew her mother imperatively towards the window. 'Captain Hibbert is waiting in the drawing-room. He says he must see you.'

At the mention of Captain Hibbert's name Mrs. Barton's admirably governed temper showed signs of yielding: her face contracted and she bit her lips.

'You must go down and see him. Tell him that Olive is very ill and that the doctor is with her. And mind you, you must not answer any questions. Say that I cannot see him, but that I am greatly surprised at his forcing his way into my house after what has passed between us; that I hope he will never intrude himself upon us again; that I cannot have my daughter's life endangered, and that, if he insists on persecuting us, I shall have to write to his Colonel.'

'Do you not think that father would be the person to make such explanations?'

'You know your father could not be trusted to talk sensibly for five minutes—at least,' she said, correcting herself, 'on anything that did not concern painting or singing. . . . But,' she continued, following her daughter to the door, 'on second thoughts I do not think it would be advisible to bring matters to a crisis. . . . I do not know how this affair will affect Olive's chances, and if he is anxious to marry her I do not see why he should not; . . . she may not be able to get any better. So you had better, I think, put him off—pretend that we are very angry, and get him to promise not to try to see or to write to Olive until, let us say, the end of the year. It will only make him more keen on her.'

When Alice opened the drawing-room door Captain Hibbert rushed forward; his soft eyes were bright with excitement, and his tall figure was thrown into a beautiful pose when he stopped.

'Oh, I beg your pardon. Miss Barton. I had expected your sister.'

'My sister is very ill in bed, and the doctor is with her.'

'Ill in bed!'

'Yes, she sprained her ankle last night in attempting to cross the stile in the wood at the end of our lawn.'

'Oh, that was the reason . . . then . . . Can I see your sister for a few minutes?'

'It is quite impossible; and my mother desires me to say that she is very much surprised that you should come here. . . . We know all about your attempt to induce Olive to leave her home.'

'Then she has told you? But if you knew how I love her, you would not blame me. What else could I do? Your mother would not let me see her, and she was very unhappy at home; you did not know this, but I did, and if luck hadn't been against me—Ah! but what's the use in talking of luck; luck was against me, or she would have been my wife now. And what a little thing suffices to blight a man's happiness in life; what a little, oh, what a little!' he said, speaking in a voice full of bitterness; and he buried his face in his hands.

Alice's eyes as she looked at him were expressive of her thoughts—they beamed at once with pity and admiration. He was but the ordinary handsome young man that in England nature seems to reproduce in everlasting stereotype. Long graceful legs, clad in tight-fitting trousers, slender hips rising architecturally to square wide shoulders, a thin strong neck and a tiny head—yes, a head so small that an artist would at once mark off eight on his sheet of double elephant. And now he lay over the back of a chair weeping like a child; in the intensity of his grief he was no longer commonplace; and as Alice looked at this superb animal thrown back in a superb abandonment of pose, her heart filled with the natural pity that the female feels always for the male in distress, and the impulse within her was to put her arms about him and console him; and then she understood her sister's passion for him, and her mind formulated it thus: 'How handsome he is! Any girl would like a man like that.' And as Alice surrendered herself to those sensuous, or rather romantic feelings, her nature quickened to a sense of pleasure, and she grew gentler with him, and was glad to listen while he sobbed out his sorrows to her.

'Oh, why,' he exclaimed, 'did she fall over that thrice-accursed stile! In five minutes more we would have been in each other's arms, and for ever. I had a couple of the best post-horses in Gort; they'd have taken us to Athenry in a couple of hours, and then—Oh! what luck, what luck!'

'But do you not know that Olive met Mrs. Lawler in the wood, and that it was she who—'

'What do you say? You don't mean to tell me that it was Mrs. Lawler who prevented Olive from meeting me? Oh, what beasts, what devils women are,' he said; 'and the worst of it is that one cannot be even with them, and they know it. If you only knew,' he said, turning almost fiercely upon Alice, 'how I loved your sister, you would pity me; but I suppose it is all over now. Is she very ill?'

'We don't know yet. She has sprained her ankle very badly, and is shivering terribly; she was lying out all night in the wet wood.'

He did not answer at once. He walked once or twice up and down the room, and then he said, taking Alice's hand in his, 'Will you be a friend to me, Miss Barton?' He could get no further, for tears were rolling down his cheeks.

Alice looked at him tenderly; she was much touched by the manifestation of his love, and at the end of a long silence she said:

'Now, Captain Hibbert, I want you to listen to me. Don't cry any more, but listen.'

'I dare say I look a great fool.'

'No, indeed you do not,' she answered; and then in kindly worded phrases she told him that, at least for the present, he must not attempt to correspond with Olive. 'Give me your word of honour that you will neither write nor speak to her for, let us say, six months, and I will promise to be your friend.'

'I will do anything you ask me to do, but will you in return promise to write and tell me how she is getting on, and if she is in any danger?'

'I think I can promise to do that; I will write and tell you how Olive is in a few days. Now we must say good-bye; and you will not forget your promise to me, as I shall not forget mine to you.'

When Alice went upstairs, Dr. Reed and Mrs. Barton were talking on the landing.

'And what do you think, doctor?' asked the anxious mother.

'It is impossible to say. She has evidently received a severe nervous shock, and this and the exposure to which she was subjected may develop into something serious. You will give her that Dover's powder to-night, and you will see that she has absolute quiet and rest. Have you got a reliable nurse?'

'Yes, the young ladies have a maid; I think Barnes can be trusted to carry out your orders, doctor.'

'Oh, mamma, I hope you will allow me to nurse my sister; I should not like to leave her in charge of a servant.'

'I am afraid you are not strong enough, dear.'

'Oh, yes, I am; am I not strong enough, doctor?'

Dr. Reed looked for a moment steadily at Alice. 'Your sister will,' he said, 'require a good deal of looking after. But if you will not overdo it, I think you seem quite strong enough to nurse her. But you must not sit up at night with her too regularly; you must share the labour with someone.'

'She will do that with me,' said Mrs. Barton, speaking more kindly, Alice thought, than she had ever heard her speak before.

Then a wailing voice was heard calling to Alice.

'Go in and see what she wants, dear, but you will not encourage her to talk much; the doctor does not wish it.'

The room did not look the same to Alice as it had ever looked before. Her eyes fell on the Persian rugs laid between the two white beds and the tall glass in the wardrobe where Olive wasted half-an-hour every evening, examining her beauty. Would she ever do so again? Now a broken reflection of feverish eyes and blonde hair was what remained. The white curtains of the chimneypiece had been drawn aside, a bright fire was burning, and Barnes was removing a foot-pan of hot water.

'Sit down here by me, Alice; I want to talk to you.'

'The doctor has forbidden you to talk, dear; he says you must have perfect rest and quiet.'

'I must talk a little to you; if I didn't I should go mad.'

'Well, what is it, dear?'

'I will tell you presently,' said the sick girl, glancing at Barnes.

'You can tidy up the room afterwards, Barnes; Miss Olive wants to talk to me now.'

'Oh, Alice, tell me,' cried the girl, when the servant had left the room, 'I don't want to ask mamma—she won't tell me the exact truth; but you will. Tell me what the doctor said. . . . Did he say I was going to die?'

'Going to die? Olive, who ever heard of such a thing? You really must not give way to such fancies.'

'Well, tell me what he said.'

'He said that you had received a severe nervous shock, that you had been subjected to several hours' exposure, that you must take great care of yourself, and, above all, have perfect rest and quiet, and not excite yourself, and not talk.'

'Is that all he said? Then he cannot know how ill I feel; perhaps I ought to see another doctor. But I don't believe anyone could do me much good. Oh, I feel wretchedly ill, and somehow I seem to know I am going to die! It would be very horrible to die; but young girls no older than I have died—have been cut off in the beginning of their life. And we have seen nothing of life, only a few balls and parties. It would be terrible to die so soon. When Violet carried off the Marquis I felt so bitterly ashamed that I thought I would have liked to die; but not now—now I know that Edward loves me I would not care to die; it would be terrible to die before I was married. Wouldn't it, Alice? . . . But you don't answer me; did you never think about death?'

Then, as the thin wailing voice sank into her ears, Alice started from her dreams, and she strove to submit her attention to her sister.

'Yes, dear, of course I have. Death is, no doubt, a very terrible thing, but we can do no good by thinking of it.'

'Oh yes, we should, Alice, for this is not the only world—there is another and a better one; and, as mamma says, and as religion says, we are only here to try and get a good place in it. You are surprised to hear me speak like this; you think I never think of anything but the colour of a bonnet-string, but I do.'

'I am sure you do, Olive; I never doubted it; but I wish you would now do what the doctor orders, and refrain from talking and exciting yourself, and try and get well. You may then think of death and other gloomy things as much as you like.'

'You don't understand, Alice; one can't think of death, then—one has so much else to think of; one is so taken up with other ideas. It is only when one is ill that one really begins to see what life is. You have never been ill, and you don't know how terribly near death seems to have come—very near. Perhaps I ought to see the priest; it would be just as well, just in case I should die. Don't you think so?'

'I don't think there is any more danger of your dying now than there was a month ago, dear, and I am sure you can have nothing on your mind that demands immediate confession,' she said, her voice trembling a little.

'Oh yes, I have, Alice, and a very great deal; I have been very wicked.'

'Very wicked!'

'Well, I know you aren't pious, Alice, and perhaps you don't believe there is harm in such things, but I do; and I know it was very wrong, and perhaps a mortal sin, to try to run away with Edward. But I loved him so very dearly, and I was so tired of staying at home and being taken out to parties. And when you are in love with a man you forget everything. At least I did; and when he asked to kiss me I couldn't refuse. You won't tell anyone, Alice dear, that I told you this.' Alice shook her head, and Olive continued, in spite of all that the doctor had said:

'But you don't know how lonely I feel at home; you never feel lonely, I dare say, for you only think of your books and papers, and don't realize what a disgrace it would be if I didn't marry, and after all the trouble that mamma has taken. But I don't know what will become of me now. I'm going to be dreadfully ill, and when I get well I shall be pretty no longer; I am sure I am looking wretchedly. I must see myself—fetch the glass, Alice, Alice.'

Olive lay whining and calling for her sister, and when Dr. Reed came he ordered several inches of the pale silky hair to be cut away and a cold lotion to be applied to the forehead, and some sliced lemons were given to her to suck.

The clear blue eyes were dull, the breathing quick, the skin dry and hot; and on the following day four leeches had to be applied to her ankle. They relieved her somewhat, and, when she had taken her draught, she sank to sleep. But as the night grew denser, Alice was suddenly awakened by someone speaking wildly in her ear: 'Take me away, dear! I am sick of home; I want to get away from all these spiteful girls. I know they are laughing at me because Violet cut me out with the Marquis. We shall be married, shan't we, the moment we arrive in Dublin? It's horrible to be married at the registrar's, but it's better than not being married at all. But do you think they will catch us up? It would be dreadful to be taken back home, I couldn't bear it. Oh, do drive on; we don't seem to be moving. You see that strange tree on the right, we haven't passed it yet; I don't think we ever shall. Whip up that bay horse; don't you see he is turning round, wants to go back? I am sure that this isn't the road; that man at the corner told you a lie. I know he was mocking at us—I saw it in his eye. . . . Look, look, Edward! Oh, look—it is papa, or Lord Dungory, I can't tell which, he won't lift his cloak.' And then the vision would fade, and she would fancy herself in the wood, arguing once again with Mrs. Lawler. 'No, what you say isn't true; he never loved you. How could he? You are an old woman. Let me pass—let me pass. Why do you speak to me? We don't visit, we never did visit you. No; it was not at our house you met Edward. You were on the streets; and Edward shall not, he could not, think of running away with you—will you, darling? Oh, help me, help me out of this dreadful wood. I want to go home, but I can't walk. That terrible bird is still watching me, and I dare not pass that tree till you drive it away.'

The two beds, with their white curtains and brass crowns, showed through the pale obscurity, broken only by the red-glowing basin where a night-light burnt, and the long tongues of flame that the blazing peat scattered from time to time across the darkened ceiling. The solitude of the sleeping house grew momentarily more intense in Alice's brain, and she trembled as she strove to soothe her sister, and covered the hot feverish arms over with the bedclothes.

'What sort of night has Olive had?' Mrs. Barton asked when she came in about eight.

'Not a very quiet one; I am afraid she's a little delirious.'

'Dr. Reed promised to be here early. How do you feel, dear?' Mrs. Barton asked, leaning over the bed.

'Oh, very ill; I can scarcely breathe, and I have such a pain in my side.'

'Your lips look very sore, dear; do they hurt you?'—Olive only moaned dismally—and, looking anxiously at her elder daughter, she said:

'And you, too, Alice, are not looking well. You are tired, and mustn't sit up another night with your sister. To-night I'll take your place.'

'Oh, mother, no! I assure you it is a pleasure to me to nurse Olive. I am very well indeed; do not think about me.'

'Indeed, I will think about you, and you must do as I tell you. I'll look after Olive, and you must try and get a good night's rest We will take it in turns to nurse her. And now come down to breakfast. Barnes, you'll not think of leaving Miss Olive until we come back; and, if any change occurs, ring for me immediately.'

When Dr. Reed arrived, Alice was again sitting by the bedside.

'And how is our patient to-day?'

'I cannot say she is any better; she has a distressing cough, and last night I am afraid she was a little delirious.'

'Ah, you say the cough is distressing?'

'I am afraid I must call it distressing; is that a very bad sign?'

'Probably there is not much wrong, but it would be better to ascertain the condition of the patient, and then we may be able to do something to relieve her.'

The doctor drew a stethoscope from his pocket, and they lifted the patient into a sitting position.

'I should like to examine her chest;' and his fingers moved to unfasten her night-gown.

'Don't expose me,' she murmured feebly.

'Now, Olive dear, remember it is only the doctor; let him examine you.'

Olive's eyes were a dull filmy blue, the lips were covered with sores, and there was a redness over the cheekbones—not the hectic flush of phthisis, but a dusky redness. And the patient was so weak that during the stethoscopic examination her head fell from side to side as she was moved, and when the doctor pressed her right side her moans were pregnant with pain.

'Now let me see the tongue. Dry and parched.'

'Shall I die, doctor?' the girl asked feebly and plaintively as she sank amidst the pillows.

'Die! no, not if you take care of yourself and do what you are told.'

'But tell me, Dr. Reed,' Alice asked. 'You can tell me the truth.'

'She'll get well if she takes care of herself. It is impossible to say. No one can predict the turn pneumonia will take.'

'Pneumonia! What is that?'

'Congestion of the lungs, or rather an advanced stage of it. It is more common in men than in women, and it is the consequence of long exposure to wet and cold.'

'Is it very dangerous?'

'Very; and now let me tell you that it is all-important that the temperature of the room should not be allowed to vary. I attended a case of it some three or four miles from here, but the damp of the cabin was so great that it was impossible to combat the disease. The cottage, or rather hovel, was built on the edge of a soft spongy bog, and so wet was it that the woman had to sweep the water every morning from the floor, where it collected in great pools. I am now going to visit an evicted family, who are living in a partially roofed shed fenced up by the roadside. The father is down with fever, and lies shivering, with nothing to drink but cold water. His wife told me that last week it rained so heavily that she had to get up three times in the night to wring the sheets out.'

'And why were they evicted?'

'Oh, that is a long story; but it is a singularly characteristic one. In the first place, he was an idle fellow; he got into difficulties and owed his landlord three years' rent. Then he got into bad hands, and was prevented from coming to terms with his landlord. There was a lot of jobbing going on between the priest and the village grocer, and finally it was arranged that the latter should pay off the existing debt if the landlord could be forced into letting him the farm at a "fair rent," that is to say, thirty per cent reduction on the old rent. In recognition of his protecting influence, the priest was to take a third of the farm off the grocer's hands, and the two were then to conjointly rack-rent poor Murphy for the remaining third portion, which he would be allowed to retain for a third of the original rent; but the National League heard of their little tricks, and now the farm is boycotted, and Murphy is dying in the ditch for the good of his counthry.'

'I thought boycotting was ended, that the League had lost all power.'

'It has and it hasn't. Sometimes a man takes a farm and keeps it in defiance of his neighbours; sometimes they hunt him out of it. It is hard to come to a conclusion, for when in one district you hear of rents being paid and boycotted farms letting freely, in another, only a few miles away, the landlords are giving reductions, and there are farms lying waste that no one dare look at. In my opinion the fire is only smouldering, and when the Coercion Act expires the old organization will rise up as strong and as triumphant as before. This is a time of respite for both parties.'

The conversation then came to a sudden pause. Alice felt it would be out of place for her to speak her sympathies for the Nationalistic cause, and she knew it would be unfair to lead the doctor to express his. So at the end of a long silence, during which each divined the other's thoughts, she said:

'I suppose you see a great deal of the poor and the miseries they endure?'

'I have had good opportunities of studying them. Before I came here I spent ten years in the poorest district in Donegal. I am sure there wasn't a gentleman's house within fifteen miles of me.'

'And didn't you feel very lonely?'

'Yes, I did, but one gets so used to solitude that to return to the world, after having lived long in the atmosphere of one's own thoughts, is painful. The repugnance that grows on those who live alone to hearing their fellow-creatures express their ideas is very remarkable. It must be felt to be understood; and I have often wondered how it was that I never met it in a novel.'

'It would be very difficult to write. Do you ever read fiction?'

'Yes, and enjoy it. In my little home amid the northern bogs, I used to look forward when I had finished writing, to reading a story.'

'What were you writing?'

'A book.'

'A book!' exclaimed Alice, looking suddenly pleased and astonished.

'Yes, but not a work of fiction—I am afraid I am too prosaic an individual for that—a medical work.'

'And have you finished your book?'

'Yes, it is finished, and I am glad to say it is in the hands of a London publisher. We have not yet agreed about the price, but I hope and believe that, directly and indirectly, it will lead to putting me into a small London practice.'

'And then you will leave us?'

'I am afraid so. There are many friends I shall miss—that I shall be very sorry to leave, but—'

'Oh, of course it would not do to miss such a chance.'

They fell to discussing the patient, and when the doctor left, Alice proceeded to carry out his instructions concerning the patient, and, these being done, she sat down by the bedside and continued her thoughts of him with a sense of pleasure. She remembered that she had always liked him. Yes, it was a liking that dated as far back as the spinsters' ball at Ballinasloe. He was the only man there in whom she had taken the slightest interest. They were sitting together on the stairs when that poor fellow was thrown down and had his leg broken. She remembered how she had enjoyed meeting him at tennis-parties, and how often she had walked away with him from the players through the shrubberies; and above all she could not forget—it was a long sweet souvenir—the beautiful afternoon she had spent with him, sitting on the rock, the day of the picnic at Kinvarra Castle. She had forgotten, or rather she had never noticed, that he was a short, thick-set, middle-aged man, that he wore mutton-chop whiskers, and that his lips were overhung by a long dark moustache. His manners were those of an unpolished and somewhat commonplace man. But while she thought of his grey eyes her heart was thrilled with gladness, and as she dreamed of his lonely life of labour and his ultimate hopes of success, all her old sorrows and fears seemed to have evaporated. Then suddenly and with the unexpectedness of an apparition the question presented itself: Did she like him better than Harding? Alice shrank from the unpleasantness of the thought, and did not force herself to answer it, but busied herself with attending to her sister's wants.

While the dawn of Alice's happiness, Olive lay suffering in all the dire humility of the flesh. Hourly her breathing grew shorter and more hurried, her cough more frequent, and the expectoration that accompanied it darker and thicker in colour. The beautiful eyes were now turgid and dull, the lids hung heavily over a line of filmy blue, and a thick scaly layer of bloody tenacious mucus persistently accumulated and covered the tiny and once almost jewel-like teeth. For three or four days these symptoms knew no abatement; and it was over this prostrated body, weakened and humiliated by illness, that Alice and Dr. Reed read love in each other's eyes, and it was about this poor flesh that their hands were joined as they lifted Olive out of the recumbent position she had slipped into, and built up the bowed-in pillows. And as it had once been all Olive in Brookfield, it was now all Alice; the veil seemed suddenly to have slipped from all eyes, and the exceeding worth of this plain girl was at last recognized. Mrs. Barton's presence at the bedside did not soothe the sufferer; she grew restless and demanded her sister. And the illness continued, her life in the balance till the eighth day. It was then that she took a turn for the better; the doctor pronounced her out of danger, and two days after she lay watching Alice and Dr. Reed talking in the window. 'Were they talking about her?' she asked herself. She did not think they were. It seemed to her that each was interested in the other. 'Laying plans,' the sick girl said to herself, 'for themselves.' At these words her senses dimmed, and when she awoke she had some difficulty in remembering what she had seen.



XXVII

'Ah, ce cher Milord, comme il est beau, comme il est parfait!' exclaimed Mrs. Barton, as she led him to his chair and poured out his glass of sherry.

But there was a gloom on his face which laughter and compliments failed for a moment to dissipate—at last he said:

'Ah, Mrs. Barton, Mrs. Barton! if I hadn't this little retreat to take refuge in, to hide myself in, during some hours of the day, I should not be able to bear up—Brookfield has prolonged my life for—'

'I cannot allow such sad thoughts as these,' said Mrs. Barton laughing, and waving her white hands. 'Who has been teasing notre cher Milord? What have dreadful Lady Jane and terrible Lady Sarah been doing to him?'

'I shall never forget this morning, no, not if I lived to a thousand,' the old gentleman murmured plaintively. 'Oh, the scenes—the scenes I have been through! Cecilia, as I told you yesterday, has been filling the house with rosaries and holywater-fonts; Jane and Sarah have been breaking these, and the result has been tears and upbraidings. Last night at dinner I don't really know what they didn't say to each other; and then the two elder ones fell upon me and declared that it was all my fault, that I ought never to have sent my daughter to a Catholic convent. I was obliged to shut myself up in the study and lock the door. Then this morning, when I thought it was all over, it began again worse than ever; and then in the middle of it all, when Jane asked Cecilia how many Gods there were in the roll of bread she was eating if the priest were to bless it—if a Papist wasn't one who couldn't worship God till somebody had turned Him into a biscuit—a most injudicious observation, I said so at the time, and I must apologize to you, my dear Mrs. Barton, for repeating it, but I am really so upset that I scarcely know what I am saying. Well, Jane had no sooner spoken than Cecilia overthrew the teacups and said she wasn't going to stay in the house to hear her religion insulted, and without another word she walked down to the parish priest and was baptized a Catholic; nor is that all. She returned with a scapular round her neck, a rosary about her waist, and a Pope's medal in her hand. I really thought Jane and Sarah would have fainted; indeed I am sure they would have fainted if Cecilia hadn't declared that she was going to pack up her things and return at once to St. Leonards and become a nun. Such an announcement as this was, of course, far beyond fainting, and . . . but no, I will not attempt to describe it, but I can assure you I was very anxious to get out of the house.'

'Cecilia going to be a nun; oh, I am so glad!' exclaimed Olive. 'It is far the best thing she could do, for she couldn't hope to be married.'

'Olive, Olive!' said Mrs. Barton, 'you shouldn't speak so openly. We should always consider the religious prejudices of others. Of course, as Catholics we must be glad to hear of anyone joining the true Church, but we should remember that Milord is going to lose his daughter.'

'I assure you, my dear Mrs. Barton, I have no prejudices. I look upon all religions as equally good and equally bad, but to be forced to live in a perpetual discussion in which teacups are broken, concerning scapulars, bacon and meal shops, and a school which, putting aside the question of expense, makes me hated in the neighbourhood, I regard as intolerable; and when I go home this evening, I shall tell Jane that the school must be put down or carried on in a less aggressive way. I assure you I have no wish to convert the people; they are paying their rents very well now, and I think it absurd to upset them; and the fact of having received Cecilia into the Church might incline the priest very much towards us.'

'And Cecilia will be so happy in that beautiful convent!' suggested Mrs. Barton.

'C'est le genie du Catholicisme de nous debarrasser des filles laides.'

And upon this expression of goodwill towards the Church of Rome Cecilia's future life was discussed with much amiability. Mrs. Barton said she would make a sweet little nun; Olive declared that she would certainly go to St. Leonard's to see her 'professed'; and Milord's description of Lady Sarah's and Lady Jane's ill-humour was considered very amusing, and just as he was about to recount some new incident—one that had escaped his memory till then—the door opened and the servant announced Dr. Reed.

'Now, what can he want? Olive is quite well. He looks at her tongue and feels her pulse. How do you do, Dr. Reed? Here is your patient, whom you will find in the best health and spirits.'

As he was about to reply, Alice came into the room, and she tried to carry on the conversation naturally. But the silence of Mrs. Barton and Milord made this difficult; Dr. Reed was not a ready talker, and this morning his replies were more than ever awkward and constrained. At last it dawned on Alice that he wanted to speak to her alone; and in answer to a remark he had made concerning the fever dens in Gort she said:

'I wanted to ask you a question or two about typhoid fever, Dr. Reed; one of my heroines is going to die of it, and I should like to avoid medical impossibilities. May I show you the passage?'

'Certainly, Miss Barton; I shall be delighted to help you—if I can.'

As soon as Alice left the room to fetch her manuscript the doctor hurriedly bade his patient, Milord, and Mrs. Barton, good-bye.

'Aren't you going to wait to see Alice?' Mrs. Barton asked.

'I have to speak to the boy in charge of my car; I shall see Miss Barton as she comes downstairs.'

Mrs. Barton looked as if she thought this arrangement not a little singular, but she said nothing; and when Alice came running downstairs with a roll of MSS. in her hand, she attempted to explain her difficulty to the doctor. He made a feeble attempt to listen to the passage she read aloud to him; and when their eyes met across the paper she saw he was going to propose to her.

'Will you walk down the drive with me? and we will talk of that as we go along.'

Her hat was on the hall-table; she took it up, and in silence walked with him out on the gravel.

'Will I put the harse up, sor?' cried the boy from the outside car.

'No; follow me down the avenue.'

It was a wild autumn evening, full of wind and leaves. The great green pasture-lands, soaked and soddened with rain, rolled their monotonous green turf to the verge of the blown beech-trees, about which the rooks drifted in picturesque confusion. Now they soared like hawks, or on straightened wings were carried down a furious gust across the tumultuous waves of upheaved yellow, and past the rift of cold crimson that is tossed like a banner through the shadows of evening.

'I came here to tell you that I am going away; that I am leaving Ireland for ever. I've bought the practice I spoke to you of in Notting Hill.'

'Oh, I am so glad!'

'Thank you! But there is another and more important matter on which I should like to speak to you. For a long time back I had resolved to leave Ireland a sad or an entirely happy man. Which shall it be? You are the only woman I ever loved—will you be my wife?'

'Yes, I will.'

'I was afraid to ask you before. But,' he added, sighing, 'I shan't be able to give you a home like the one you are leaving. We shall have to be very economical; we shall not have more than three hundred a year to live upon. Will you be satisfied with that?'

'I hope, indeed—I am sure we shall get on very well. You forget that I can do something to keep myself,' she added, smiling. 'I have two or three orders.'

She passed her arm through Dr. Reed's; and as he unfolded his plans to her, he held her hand warmly and affectionately in his: and as the twilight drifted it was wrapped like a veil about them. The rooks in great flitting flocks passed over their heads, the tempestuous crimson of the sky had been hurled further away, and only the form of the grey horse, that the boy had allowed to graze, stood out distinctly in the gloom that descended upon the earth.



XXVIII

On the very first opportunity she could find Alice told her mother that Dr. Reed had proposed to her, and that she had accepted him. Mrs. Barton said it was disgraceful, and that she would never hear of such a marriage; and when the doctor called next day she acquainted him with her views on the subject. She told him he had very improperly taken advantage of his position to make love to her daughter; she really didn't know how he could ever have arrived at the conclusion that a match was possible, and that for the future his visits must cease at Brookfield. And when Alice heard what had passed between Dr. Reed and her mother she wrote, assuring him that her feelings towards him would remain uninfluenced by anything that anyone might say. All the same, it might be as well, having regard for what had happened, that the marriage should take place with the least possible delay.

She took this letter down to the post-office herself, and when she returned she entered the drawing-room and told Mrs. Barton what she had done.

'I wish you had shown me the letter before you sent it. There is nothing we need advice about so much as a letter.'

'Yes, mother,' replied Alice, deceived by the gentleness of Mrs. Barton's manner; 'but we seemed to hold such widely different views on this matter that there did not seem to be any use in discussing it.'

'Mother and daughter should never hold different views; my children's interests are my interests—what interests have I now but theirs?'

'Oh, mother! Then you will consent to this marriage?'

Mrs. Barton's face always changed expression before a direct question. 'My dear, I would consent to anything that would make you happy; but it seems to me impossible that you could be happy with Dr. Reed. I wonder how you could like him. You do not know—I mean, you do not realize what the intimacies of married life are. They are often hard to put up with, no matter who the man may be, but with one who is not a gentleman—'

'But, mother, Dr. Reed seems to me to be in every way a gentleman. Who is there more gentlemanly in the country? I am sure that from every point of view he is preferable to Mr. Adair or Sir Charles, or Sir Richard or Mr. Ryan, or his cousin, Mr. Lynch.'

'My darling child, I would sooner see you laid in your coffin than married to either Mr. Ryan or Mr. Lynch; but that is not the question. It is, whether you had not better wait for a few years before you throw yourself away on such a man as Dr. Reed. I know that you have been greatly tried; nothing is so trying to a girl as to come out with her sister who is the belle of the season, and I must say you have shown a great deal of pluck; and perhaps I haven't been considerate enough. But I, too, have had my disappointments—Olive's affairs did not, as you know, turn out as well as I had expected, and to see you now marry one who is so much beneath us!'

'Mother, dear, he is not beneath us. There is no one who has earned his career but Dr. Reed; he owes nothing to anyone; he has done it all by his own exertions; and now he has bought a London practice.'

'Then you do not love him; it is only for the sake of settling yourself in life that you are marrying him?'

'I respect Dr. Reed more than any man living; I bear for him a most sincere affection, and I hope to make him a good wife.'

'You don't love him as you did Mr. Harding? If you will only wait you may get him. The tenants are paying their rents very well, and I am thinking of going to London in the spring.'

The girl winced at the mention of Harding, but she looked into her mother's soft appealing brown eyes; and, reading clearer than she had ever read before all the adorable falseness that lay therein, she answered:

'I do not want to marry Mr. Harding; I am engaged to Dr. Reed, and I do not intend to give him up.'

This answer was given so firmly that Mrs. Barton lost her temper for a moment, and she said:

'And do you really know what this Dr. Reed originally was? Lord Dungory is dining here to-night; he knows all about Dr. Reed's antecedents, and I am sure he will be horrified when he hears that you are thinking of marrying him.'

'I cannot recognize Lord Dungory's right to advise me on any course I may choose to take, and I hope he will have the good taste to refrain from speaking to me of my marriage.'

'What do you mean? How dare you speak to me like that, you impertinent girl!'

'I am not impertinent, mother, and I hope I shall never be impertinent to you; but I am now in my twenty-fifth year, and if I am ever to judge for myself, I must do so now.'

Alice was curiously surprised by her own words; it seemed to her that it was some strange woman, and not herself—not the old self with whom she was intimately acquainted—who was speaking. Life is full of these epoch-marking moments. We have all at some given time experienced the sensation of finding ourselves either stronger or weaker than we had ever before known ourselves to be; Alice now for the first time felt that she was speaking and acting in her own individual right; and the knowledge as it thrilled through her consciousness was almost a physical pleasure. But notwithstanding the certitude that never left her of the propriety of her conduct, and the equally ever-present sentiment of the happiness that awaited her, she suffered much during the next ten days, and she was frequently in tears. Cecilia had started for St. Leonards without coming to wish her good-bye, and the cruel sneers, insinuations of all kinds against her and against Dr. Reed, which Mrs. Barton never missed an occasion of using, wounded the girl so deeply, that it was only at the rarest intervals that she left her room—when she walked to the post with a letter, when the luncheon or dinner bell rang. Why she should be thus persecuted, Alice was unable to determine; and why her family did not hail with delight this chance of getting rid of a plain girl, whose prospects were limited, was difficult to say; nor could the girl arrive at any notion of the pleasure or profit it might be to anyone that she should waste her life amid chaperons and gossip, instead of taking her part in the world's work. And yet this seemed to be her mother's idea. She did not hesitate to threaten that she would neither attend herself, nor allow Mr. Barton to attend the ceremony. Alice might meet Dr. Reed at the corner of the road, and be married as best she could. Alice appealed to her father against this decision, but she soon had to renounce the hope of obtaining any definite answer. He had been previously told that if he attempted any interference, his supply of paints, brushes, canvases, and guitar-strings would be cut off, and, as he was at present deeply engaged on a new picture of Julius Caesar overturning the Altars of the Druids, he hesitated before the alternatives offered to him. He spoke with much affection; he regretted that Alice could not see her way to marrying somebody whom her mother could approve! He explained the difficulties of his position, and the necessity of his turning something out—seeing what he really could do before the close of the year. Alice was disappointed, and bitterly, but she bore her disappointment bravely, and she wrote to Dr. Reed, telling him what had occurred, and proposing to meet him on a certain day at the Parish Church, where Father Shannon would marry them; and, that if he refused, they would proceed to Dublin, and be married at the Registry Office. In a way Alice would have preferred this latter course, but her good sense warned her against the uselessness of offering any too violent opposition to the opinions of the world. And so it was arranged; and sad, weary, and wretched, Alice lingered through the last few days of the life that had always been to her one of humiliation, and which now towards its close had quieted to one of intense pain.

The Brennans had promised to meet her in the chapel, and one day, as she was sitting by her window, she saw May in all the glory of her copper hair, drive a tandem up to the door. This girl threw the reins to the groom, and rushed to her friend.

'And how do you do, Alice, and how well you are looking, and how pleased I am to see you. I would have come before, only my leader was coughing and I couldn't take him out. Oh, I was so wild; it is always like that; nothing is so disappointing as horses; whenever you especially require them they are laid up, and you can't imagine the difficulty I had to get him along; I must really get another leader; he was trying to turn round the whole way—if it hadn't been for the whip. I took blood out of him three times running. But I know you don't care anything about horses, and I want to hear about this marriage. I am so glad, so pleased, but tell me, do you like him? He seems a very nice sort of man, you know, a man that would make a woman happy. . . . I am sure you will be happy with him, but it is dreadful to think we are going to lose you. I shall, I know, be running over to London on purpose to see you; but tell me, what I want to know is, do you like him? Would you believe it, I never once suspected there was anything between you?'

'Yes, my dear May,' Alice replied smiling, 'I do like Edward Reed; nor do I think that I should ever like any other man half as much: I have perfect confidence in him, and where there is not confidence there cannot be love. He has bought a small practice in Notting Hill, which with care and industry he hopes may be worked up into a substantial business. We shall be very poor at first, but we shall be able to make both ends meet.'

'I can see it all; a little suburban semi-detached house, with green Venetian blinds, a small mahogany sideboard, and a clean capped maid-servant; and in the drawing-room you won't have a piano—you don't care for music, but you'll have some basket chairs, and small bookcases, and a tea-table with tea-cakes at five—oh, won't you look quiet and grave at that tea-table. But tell me, it is all over the county that Mrs. Barton won't hear of this marriage, and that she won't allow your father to go to the chapel to give you away. It is a shame, and for the life of me I can't see what parents have to do with our marriages, do you?'

Without waiting for an answer, May continued the conversation, and with vehemence she passed from one subject to another utterly disconnected without a transitional word of explanation. She explained how tiresome it was to sit at home of an evening listening to Mrs. Gould bemoaning the state of the country; she spoke of her terrier, and this led up to a critical examination of the good looks of several of the officers stationed at Gort; then she alluded to the last meet of the hounds, and she described the big wall she and Mrs. Manly had jumped together; a new hat and an old skirt that she had lately done up came in for a passing remark, and, with an abundance of laughter, May gave an account of a luncheon-party at Lord Rosshill's; and, apparently verbatim, she told what each of the five Honourable Miss Gores had said about the marriage. Then growing suddenly serious, she said:

'It is all very well to laugh, but, when one comes to think of it, it is very sad indeed to see seven human lives wasting away, a whole family of girls eating their hearts out in despair, having nothing to do but to pop about from one tennis-party to another, and chatter to each other or their chaperons of this girl and that who does not seem to be getting married. You are very lucky indeed, Alice—luckier than you think you are, and you are quite right to stick out and do the best you can for yourself in spite of what your people say. It is all very well for them to talk, but they don't know what we suffer: we are not all made alike, and the wants of one are not the wants of another. I dare say you never thought much about that sort of thing; but as I say, we are not all made alike. Every woman, or nearly every one, wants a husband and a home, and it is only natural she should, and if she doesn't get them the temptations she has to go through are something frightful, and if we make the slightest slip the whole world is down upon us. I can talk to you, Alice, because you know what I have gone through. You have been a very good friend to me—had it not been for you I don't know what would have become of me. You didn't reproach me, you were kind and had pity for me; you are a sensible person, and I dare say you understood that I wasn't entirely to blame. And I wasn't entirely to blame; the circumstances we girls live under are not just—no, they are not just. We are told that we must marry a man with at least a thousand a year, or remain spinsters; well, I should like to know where the men are who have a thousand a year, and some of us can't remain spinsters. Oh! you are very lucky indeed to have found a husband, and to be going away to a home of your own. I wish I were as lucky as you, Alice, indeed I do, for then there would be no excuse, and I could be a good woman. You won't hate me too much, will you, Alice? I have made a lot of good resolutions, and they shall be kept some day.'

'Some day! You don't mean that you are again—'

'No; but I've a lover. It is dreadfully sinful, and if I died I should go straight to hell. I know all that. I wish I were going to be married, like you! For then one is out of temptation. Haven't you a kind word for me? Won't you kiss me and tell me you don't despise me?'

'Of course I'll kiss you, May; and I am sure that one of these days you will—'

Alice could say no more; and the girls kissed and cried in each other's arms, and the group was a sad allegory of poor humanity's triumph, and poor humanity's more than piteous failures. At last they went downstairs, and in the hall May showed Alice the beautiful wedding-present she had bought her, and the girl did not say that she had sold her hunter to buy it.



XXIX

At Brookfield on the morning of December 3, '84, the rain fell persistently in the midst of a profound silence. The trees stood stark in the grey air as if petrified; there was not wind enough to waft the falling leaf; it fell straight as if shotted.

Not a living thing was to be seen except the wet sheep, nor did anything stir either within or without till an outside car, one seat overturned to save the cushions from the wet, came careering up the avenue. There was a shaggy horse and a wild-looking driver in a long, shaggy frieze ulster. Even now, at the last moment, Alice expected the drawing-room door to open and her mother to come rushing out to wish her good-bye. But Mrs. Barton remained implacable, and after laying one more kiss on her sister's pale cheek, Alice, in a passionate flood of tears, was driven away.

In streaming mackintoshes, and leaning on dripping umbrellas, she found her husband, and Gladys and Zoe Brennan, waiting for her in the porch of the church.

'Did you ever see such weather?' said Zoe.

'Isn't it dreadful!' said Gladys.

'It was good of you to come,' said Alice.

'It was indeed!' said the bridegroom.

'What nonsense!' said Zoe. 'We were only too pleased; and if to-day be wet, to-morrow and the next and the next will be sunshine.

And thanking Zoe inwardly for this most appropriate remark, the party ascended the church toward the altar-rails, where Father Shannon was awaiting them. Large, pompous, and arrogant, he stood on his altar-steps, and his hands were crossed over his portly stomach. On either side of him the plaster angels bowed their heads and folded their wings. Above him the great chancel window, with its panes of green and yellow glass, jarred in an unutterable clash of colour; and the great white stare of the chalky walls, and the earthen floor with its tub of holy water, and the German prints absurdly representing the suffering of Christ, bespoke the primitive belief, the coarse superstition, of which the place was an immediate symbol. Alice and the doctor looked at each other and smiled, but their thoughts were too firmly fixed on the actual problem of their united lives to wander far in the most hidden ways of the old world's psychical extravagances. What did it matter to them what absurd usages the place they were in was put to?—they, at least, were only making use of it as they might of any other public office—the police-station, where inquiries are made concerning parcels left in cabs; the Commissioner before whom an affidavit is made. And it served its purpose as well as any of the others did theirs. The priest joined their hands, Edward put the ring on Alice's finger, and the usual prayers did no harm if they did no good; and having signed their names in the register and bid good-bye to the Miss Brennans, they got into the carriage, man and wife, their feet set for ever upon one path, their interests and delights melted to one interest and one delight, their separate troubles merged into one trouble that might or might not be made lighter by the sharing; and penetrated by such thoughts they leaned back on the blue cushions of the carriage, happy, and yet a little frightened.

Rather than pass three hours waiting for a train at the little station of Ardrahan, it had been arranged to spend the time driving to Athenry; and, as the carriage rolled through the deliquefying country, the eyes of the man and the woman rested half fondly, half regretfully, and wholly pitifully, on all the familiar signs and the wild landmarks which during so many years had grown into and become part of the texture of their habitual thought; on things of which they would now have to wholly divest themselves, and remember only as the background of their younger lives. Through the streaming glass they could see the strip of bog; and the half-naked woman, her soaked petticoat clinging about her red legs, piling the wet peat into the baskets thrown across the meagre back of a starveling ass. And farther on there were low-lying, swampy fields, and between them and the roadside a few miserable poplars with cabins sunk below the dung-heaps, and the meagre potato-plots lying about them; and then, as these are passed, there are green enclosures full of fattening kine, and here and there a dismantled cottage, one wall still black with the chimney's smoke, uttering to those who know the country a tale of eviction. Beyond these, beautiful plantations sweep along the crests of the hills, the pillars of a Georgian house showing at the end of a vista. The carriage turned up a narrow road, and our travellers came upon a dozen policemen grouped round a roadside cottage, out of which the furniture had just been thrown. The family had taken shelter from the rain under a hawthorn-tree, and the agents were consulting with their bailiffs if it would not be as well to throw down the walls of the cottage.

'If we don't,' one of the men said, 'they will be back again as soon as our backs are turned, and our work will have to be begun all over again.'

'Shocking,' Alice said, 'that an eviction scene should be our last glimpse of Ireland. Let us pay the rent for them, Edward,' and as she spoke the words the thought passed through her mind that her almsgiving was only another form of selfishness. She wished her departure to be associated with an act of kindness. She would have withdrawn her request, but Edward's hand was in his pocket and he was asking the agent how much the rent was. Five years' rent was owing—more than the travellers had in their purses.

'It is well that we cannot assist them to remain here,' said Edward. 'Circumstances are different, and they will harden; none is of use here. Of what use—'

'You believe, then, that this misery will last for ever?'

'Nothing lasts in Ireland but the priests. And now let us forget Ireland, as many have done before us.'

* * * * *

Two years and a half have passed away, and the suburban home predicted by May, when she came to bid Alice a last good-bye, arises before the reader in all its yellow paint and homely vulgarity. In this suburb we find the ten-roomed house with all its special characteristics—a dining-room window looking upon a commodious area with dust and coal holes. The drawing-room has two windows, and the slender balcony is generally set with flower-boxes. Above that come the two windows of the best bedroom belonging to Mr. and Mrs., and above that again the windows of two small rooms, respectively inhabited by the eldest son and daughter; and these are topped by the mock-Elizabethan gable which enframes the tiny window of a servant's room. Each house has a pair of trim stone pillars, the crude green of the Venetian blinds jars the cultured eye, and even the tender green of the foliage in the crescent seems as cheap and as common as if it had been bought—as everything else is in Ashbourne Crescent—at the Stores. But how much does this crescent of shrubs mean to the neighbourhood? Is it not there that the old ladies take their pugs for their constitutional walks, and is it not there that the young ladies play tennis with their gentleman acquaintances when they come home from the City on a Saturday afternoon?

In Ashbourne Crescent there is neither Dissent nor Radicalism, but general aversion to all considerations which might disturb belief in all the routine of existence, in all its temporal and spiritual aspects, as it had come amongst them. The fathers and the brothers go to the City every day at nine, the young ladies play tennis, read novels, and beg to be taken to dances at the Kensington Town Hall. On Sunday the air is alive with the clanging of bells, and in orderly procession every family proceeds to church, the fathers in all the gravity of umbrellas and prayer-books, the matrons in silk mantles and clumsy ready-made elastic sides; the girls in all the gaiety of their summer dresses with lively bustles bobbing, the young men in frock-coats which show off their broad shoulders—from time to time they pull their tawny moustaches. Each house keeps a cook and housemaid, and on Sunday afternoons, when the skies are flushed with sunset and the outlines of this human warren grow harshly distinct—black lines upon pale red—these are seen walking arm-in-arm away towards a distant park with their young men.

Ashbourne Crescent, with its bright brass knockers, its white-capped maid-servant, and spotless oilcloths, will pass away before some great tide of revolution that is now gathering strength far away, deep down and out of sight in the heart of the nation, is probable enough; but for the moment it is, in all its cheapness and vulgarity, more than anything else representative, though the length and breadth of the land be searched, of the genius of Empire that has been glorious through the long tale that nine hundred years have to tell. Ashbourne Crescent may possibly soon be replaced by something better, but at present it commands our admiration, for it is, more than all else, typical England. Neither ideas nor much lucidity will be found there, but much belief in the wisdom shown in the present ordering of things, and much plain sense and much honesty of purpose. Certainly, if your quest be for hectic emotion and passionate impulses, you would do well to turn your steps aside; you will not find them in Ashbourne Crescent. There life flows monotonously, perhaps sometimes even a little moodily, but it is built upon a basis of honest materialism—that materialism without which the world cannot live. And No. 31 differs a little from the rest of the houses. The paint on its walls is fresher, and there are no flowers on its balcony: the hall-door has three bells instead of the usual two, and there is a brass plate with 'Dr. Reed' engraved upon it. The cook is talking through the area-railings to the butcher-boy; a smart parlourmaid opens the door, and we see that the interior is as orderly, commonplace, and clean as we might expect at every house in the crescent. The floorcloths are irreproachable, the marble-painted walls are unadorned with a single picture. On the right is the dining-room, a mahogany table bought for five pounds in the Tottenham Court Road, a dozen chairs to match, a sideboard and a small table; green-painted walls decorated with two engravings, one of Frith's 'Railway Station,' the other of Guido's 'Fortune.' Further down the passage leading to the kitchen-stairs there is a second room: this is the Doctor's consulting-room. A small bookcase filled with serious-looking volumes, a mahogany escritoire strewn with papers, letters, memoranda of all sorts. The floor is covered with a bright Brussels carpet; there are two leather armchairs, and a portrait of an admiral hangs over the fireplace.

Let us go upstairs. How bright and clean are the high marble-painted walls! and on the first landing there is a large cheaply coloured window. The drawing-room is a double room, not divided by curtains but by stiff folding-doors. The furniture is in red, and the heavy curtains that drape the windows fall from gilt cornices. In the middle of the floor there is a settee (probably a reminiscence of the Shelbourne Hotel); and on either side of the fireplace there are sofas, and about the hearthrug many arm-chairs to match with the rest. Above the chimneypiece there is a gilt oval mirror, worth ten pounds. The second room is Alice's study; it is there she writes her novels. A table in black wood with a pile of MSS. neatly fastened together stands in one corner; there is a bookcase just behind; its shelves are furnished with imaginative literature, such as Shelley's poems, Wordsworth's poems, Keats' poems. There are also handsome editions of Tennyson and Browning, presents from Dr. Reed to his wife. You see a little higher up the shelf a thin volume, Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon, and next to it is Walter Pater's Renaissance—studies in art and poetry. There are also many volumes in yellow covers, evidently French novels.

The character of the house is therefore essentially provincial, and shows that its occupants have not always lived amid the complex influences of London life—viz., is not even suburban. Nevertheless, here and there traces of new artistic impulses are seen. On the mantelpiece in the larger room there are two large blue vases; on a small table stands a pot in yellow porcelain, evidently from Morris's; and on the walls there are engravings from Burne Jones. Every Thursday afternoon numbers of ladies, all of whom write novels, assemble here to drink tea and talk of their work.

It is now eleven o'clock in the morning. Alice enters her drawing-room. You see her: a tall, spare woman with kind eyes, who carries her arms stiffly. She has just finished her housekeeping, she puts down her basket of keys, and with all the beautiful movement of the young mother she takes up the crawling mass of white frock, kisses her son and settles his blue sash. And when she has talked to him for a few minutes she rings the bell for nurse; then she sits down to write. As usual, her pen runs on without a perceptible pause. Words come to her easily, but she has not finished the opening paragraph of the article she is writing when the sound of rapid footsteps attracts her attention, and Olive bursts into the room.

'Oh, Alice, how do you do? I couldn't stop at home any longer, I am sick of it.'

'Couldn't stop at home any longer, Olive; what do you mean?'

'If you won't take me in, say so, and I'll go.'

'My dear Olive, I shall be delighted to have you with me; but why can't you stop at home any longer—surely there is no harm in my asking?'

'Oh, I don't know; don't ask me; I am so miserable at home; I can't tell you how unhappy I am. I know I shall never be married, and the perpetual trying to make up matches is sickening. Mamma will insist on riches, position, and all that sort of thing—those kind of men don't want to get married—I am sick of going out; I won't go out any more. We never missed a tennis-party last year; we used to go sometimes ten miles to them, so eager was mamma after Captain Gibbon, and it did not come off; and then the whole country laughs.'

'And who is Captain Gibbon? I never heard of him before.'

'No, you don't know him: he was not in Galway in your time.'

'And Captain Hibbert! Have you heard from him since he went out to India?'

'Yes, once; he wrote to me to say that he hoped to see me when he came home.'

'And when will that be?'

'Oh, I don't know; when people go out to India one never expects to see them again.'

Seeing how sore the wound was, Alice did not attempt to probe it, but strove rather to lead Olive's thoughts away from it, and gradually the sisters lapsed into talking of their acquaintances and friends, and of how life had dealt with them.

'And May, what is she doing?'

'She met with a bad accident, and has not been out hunting lately. She was riding a pounding match with Mrs. Manly across country: May's horse came to grief at a big wall, and broke several of her ribs. They say she has given up riding—now she does nothing but paint. You remember how well she used to paint at school.'

'And the Brennans?'

'Oh, they go up to the Shelbourne every year, but none of them are married; and I am afraid that they must be very hard up, for their land is very highly let, and the tenants are paying no rent at all now—Ireland is worse than ever; we shall all be ruined, and they say Home Rule is certain. But I am sick of the subject.'

Then the Duffys, the Honourable Miss Gores, and the many other families of unmarried girls—the poor muslin martyrs, whose sufferings were the theme of this book, were again passed in review; their failures sometimes jeeringly alluded to by Olive, but always listened to pityingly by Alice—and, talking thus of their past life, the sisters leant over the spring fire that burnt out in the grate. At the end of a long silence Alice said:

'Well, dear, I hope you have come to live with us, or at any rate to pay us a long visit.'



THE END