XV

It rained incessantly. Sheets of water, blown by winds that had travelled the Atlantic, deluged the county; grey mists trailed mournful and shapeless along the edges of the domain woods, over the ridges of the tenants' holdings. 'Never more shall we be driven forth to die in the bogs and ditches,' was the cry that rang through the mist; and, guarded by policemen, in their stately houses, the landlords listened, waiting for the sword of a new coercion to fall and release them from their bondage. The meeting of Parliament in the spring would bring them this; in the meantime, all who could, fled, resolving not to return till the law restored the power that the Land League had so rudely shaken. Some went to England, others to France. Mr. Barton accepted two hundred pounds from his wife and proceeded to study gargoyles and pictures in Bruges; and, striving to forget the murders and rumours of murders that filled the papers, the girls and their mammas talked of beaux, partners, and trains, in spite of the irritating presence of the Land League agitators who stood on the platforms of the different stations. The train was full of girls. Besides the Bartons, there were the Brennans: Gladys and Zoe—Emily remained at home to look after the place. Three of the Miss Duffys were coming to the Drawing-Room, and four of the Honourable Miss Gores; the Goulds and Scullys made one party, and to avoid Mrs. Barton, the Ladies Cullen had pleaded important duties. They were to follow in a day or so.

Lord Dungory's advice to Mrs. Barton was to take a house, and he warned her against spending the whole season in an hotel, but apparently without avail, for when the train stopped a laughing voice was heard: 'Milord, vous n'êtes qu'un vilain misanthrope; we shall be very comfortable at the Shelbourne; we shall meet all the people in Dublin there, and we can have private rooms to give dinner-parties.'

Hearing this, Alice congratulated herself, for in an hotel she would be freer than she would be in a house let for the season. She would hear something, and see a little over the horizon of her family in an hotel. She had spent a week in the Shelbourne on her way home from school, and remembered the little winter-garden on the first landing, and the fountain splashing amid ferns and stone frogs. The ladies' drawing-room she knew was on the right, and when she had taken off her hat and jacket, leaving her mother and sister talking of Mrs. Symond and Lord Kilcarney, she went there hoping to find some of the people whom she had met there before.

The usually skirt-filled ottoman stood vacantly gaping, the little chairs seemed lonely about the hearthrug, even the sofa where the invalid ladies sat was unoccupied, and the perforated blinds gave the crowds that passed up and down the street a shadow-like appearance. The prospect was not inspiriting, but not knowing what else to do, Alice sat down by the fire, and fell to thinking who the man might be that sat reading on the other side of the fireplace. He didn't seem as if he knew much about horses, and as he read intently, she could watch him unobserved. At last their eyes met, and when Alice turned away her face she felt that he was looking at her, and, perhaps getting nervous under his examination, she made a movement to stir the fire.

'Will you allow me?' he said, rising from his chair. 'I beg your pardon, but, if you will allow me, I will arrange the fire.'

Alice let him have the poker, and when he had knocked in the coal-crust and put on some fresh fuel, he said:

'If it weren't for me I don't know what would become of this fire. I believe the old porter goes to sleep and forgets all about it. Now and again he wakes up and makes a deal of fuss with a shovel and a broom.'

'I really can't say, we only came up from Galway to-day.'

'Then you don't know the famous Shelbourne Hotel! All the events of life are accomplished here. People live here, and die here, and flirt here, and, I was going to say, marry here—but hitherto the Shelbourne marriages have resulted in break-offs—and we quarrel here; the friends of to-day are enemies to-morrow, and then they sit at different ends of the room. Life in the Shelbourne is a thing in itself, and a thing to be studied.'

Alice laughed again, and again she continued her conversation.

'I really know nothing of the Shelbourne. I was only here once before, and then only for a few days last summer, when I came home from school.'

'And now you are here for the Drawing-Room?'

'Yes; but how did you guess that?'

'The natural course of events: a young lady leaves school, she spends four or five months at home, and then she is taken to the Lord-Lieutenant's Drawing-Room.'

She liked him none the better for what he had said, and began to wonder how she might bring the conversation to a close. But when he spoke again she forgot her intentions, and allowed his voice to charm her.

'I think you told me,' he said, 'that you came up from Galway to-day; may
I ask you from what side of the county?'

Another piece of impertinence. Why should he question her? And yet she answered him.

'We live near Gort—do you know Gort?'

'Oh yes, I have been travelling for the last two months in Ireland. I spent nearly a fortnight in Galway. Lord Dungory lives near Gort. Do you know him?'

'Very well indeed. He is our nearest neighbour; we see him nearly every day. Do you know him?'

'Yes, a little. I have met him in London. If I had not been so pressed for time I should have called upon him when I was in Galway. I passed his place going to a land meeting—oh, you need not be alarmed, I am not a Land League organizer, or else I should not have thought of calling at Dungory Castle. What a pretty drive it is to Gort.'

'Then, do you know a place on the left-hand side of the road, about a mile and a half from Dungory Castle?'

'You mean Brookfield?'

'Yes; that is our place.'

'Then you are Miss Barton?'

'Yes, I am Miss Barton; do you know father or mother?'

'No, no; but I have heard the name in Galway. I was spending a few days with one of your neighbours.'

'Oh, really!' said Alice, a little embarrassed; for she knew it must have been with the Lawlers that he had been staying. At the end of a long silence she said:

'I am afraid you have chosen a rather unfortunate time for visiting Ireland. All these terrible outrages, murders, refusals to pay rent; I wonder you have not been frightened away.'

'As I do not possess a foot of land—I believe I should say "not land enough to sod a lark"—my claim to collect rent would rest on even a slighter basis than that of the landlords; and as, with the charming inconsistency of your race, you have taken to killing each other instead of slaughtering the hated Saxon, I really feel safer in Ireland than elsewhere. I suppose,' he said, 'you do a great deal of novel-reading in the country?'

'Oh yes,' she answered, with almost an accent of voluptuousness in her voice; 'I spent the winter reading.'

'Because there was no hunting?' replied Harding, with a smile full of cynical weariness.

'No, I assure you, no; I do not think I should have gone out hunting even if it hadn't been stopped,' said Alice hastily; for it vexed her not a little to see that she was considered incapable of loving a book for its own sake.

'And what do you read?'

The tone of indifference with which the question was put was not lost upon Alice, but she was too much interested in the conversation to pay heed to it. She said:

'I read nearly all Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Browning—I think I like him better than all the poets! Do you know the scene at St. Praxed's?'

'Yes, of course; it is very fine. But I don't know that I ever cared much for Browning. Not only the verse, but the whole mind of the man is uncouth—yes, uncouth is the word I want. He is the Carlyle of Poetry. Have you ever read Carlyle?'

'Oh yes, I have read his French Revolution and his Life of Schiller, but that's all. I only came home from school last summer, and at school we never read anything. I couldn't get many new books down in Galway. There were, of course, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot in the library, but that was all. I once got a beautiful book from Dungory Castle. I wonder if you ever read it? It is called Madame Gervaisais. From the descriptions of Rome it almost seems to me that I have been there.'

'I know the book, but I didn't know a Catholic girl could admire it—and you are a Catholic, I presume?'

'I was brought up a Catholic.'

'It is one thing to be brought up a Catholic, and another to avoid doubting.'

'There can surely be no harm in doubting?'

'Not the least; but toward which side are you? Have you fallen into the soft feather-bed of agnosticism, or the thorny ditch of belief?'

'Why do you say "the soft feather-bed of agnosticism"?'

'It must be a relief to be redeemed from belief in hell; and perhaps there is no other redemption.'

'And do you never doubt?' she said.

'No, I can't say I am given much to doubting, nor do I think the subject is any longer worthy of thought. The world's mind, after much anxiety, arrives at a conclusion, and what sages cannot determine in one age, a child is certain about in the next. Thomas Aquinas was harassed with doubts regarding the possibility of old women flying through the air on broomsticks; nowadays were a man thus afflicted he would be surely a fit subject for Hanwell. The world has lived through Christianity, as it has through a score of other things. But I am afraid I shock you?'

'No, I don't think you do; only I never heard anyone speak in that way before—that is all.'

Here the conversation came to a pause, and soon after the presence of some ladies rendered its revival impossible. Their evening gowns suggested the dinner-hour, and reminded Alice that she had to prepare herself for the meal.

All the Galway people, excepting the Honourable Misses Gore and the Scullys—who had taken houses in town for the season—dined at table d'hote. The Miss Duffys were, with the famous Bertha, the terror of the débutantes. The Brennans and the Goulds sat at the same table. May, thinking of Fred, who had promised to come during the evening, leaned back in her chair, looking unutterably bored. Under a window Sir Richard and Sir Charles were immersed in wine and discussion. In earnest tones the latter deprecated the folly of indulging in country love; the former, his hand on the champagne bottle, hiccoughed, 'Mu—ch better come up—up Dub—lin, yer know, my boy. But look, look here; I know such a nice'—a glance round, to make sure that no lady was within earshot; and the conversation lapsed into a still more confidential whisper.

Mr. Ryan and Mr. Lynch ate their dinner in sullen silence, and at the other end of the long table Mr. Adair—whom it was now confidently stated Mr. Gladstone could not possibly get on without—talked to Mr. Harding; and when the few dried oranges and tough grapes that constituted dessert had been tasted, the ladies got up, and in twos and threes retired to the ladies' sitting-room. They were followed by Lord Dungory, Mr. Adair, and Mr. Harding: the other gentlemen—the baronets and Messrs. Ryan and Lynch—preferring smoke and drink to chatter and oblique glances in the direction of ankle-concealing skirts, went up to the billiardroom. And the skirts, what an importance they took in the great sitting-room full of easy-chairs and Swiss scenery: châlets, lakes, cascades, and chamois, painted on the light-coloured walls. The big ottoman was swollen with bustled skirts; the little low seats around the fire disappeared under skirts; skirts were tucked away to hide the slippered feet, skirts were laid out along the sofas to show the elegance of the cut. Then woolwork and circulating novels were produced, and the conversation turned on marriage. Bertha being the only Dublin girl present, all were anxious to hear her speak; after a few introductory remarks, she began:

'Oh! so you have all come up to the Castle and are going to be presented. Well, you'll find the rooms very grand, and the suppers very good, and if you know a lot of people—particularly the officers quartered here—you will find the Castle balls very amusing. The best way is to come to town a month before the Drawing-Room, and give a ball; and in that way you get to know all the men. If you haven't done that, I am afraid you won't get many partners. Even if you do get introduced, they'll only ask you to dance, and you'll never see them again. Dublin is like a racecourse, men come and speak to you and pass on. 'Tis pleasant enough if you know people, but as for marriages, there aren't any. I assure you I know lots of girls—and very pretty girls, too—who have been going out these six or seven seasons, and who have not been able to pull it off.'

'And the worst of it is,' said a girl, 'every year we are growing more and more numerous, and the men seem to be getting fewer. Nowadays a man won't look at you unless you have at least two thousand a year.'

Mrs. Barton, who did not wish her daughters to be discouraged from the first, settled her skirts with a movement of disdain. Mrs. Gould pathetically declared she did not believe love to be dead in the world yet, and maintained her opinion that a nice girl could always marry. But Bertha was not easily silenced, and, being perfectly conversant with her subject, she disposed of Dublin's claims as a marriage-mart, and she continued to comment on the disappointments of girls until the appearance of Lord Dungory and Mr. Harding brought the conversation to a sudden close.

'Une causerie de femme! que dites-vous?—je le suis—l'amour n'existe plus, et l'âme de l'homme est plus près des sens que l'âme de la femme,' said Milord. Everyone laughed; and, with a charming movement of her skirts, Mrs. Barton made room for him to sit beside her.

Harding withdrew to the other end of the room to resume his reading, and Alice did not dare to hope that he would lay aside his book and come to talk to her. If he did, her mother would ask her to introduce him to her, and she would have to enter into explanations that he and she had merely exchanged a few words before dinner.

She withstood the conversation of the charmed circle as long as she could, and then boldly crossed the room for a newspaper. Harding rose to help her to find one, and they talked together till Milord took him away to the billiard-room.

May, who had been vainly expecting Fred the whole evening, said:

'Well, Alice, I hope you have had a nice flirtation?'

'And did you notice, May, how she left us to look for a newspaper. Our Alice is fond of reading, but it was not of reading she was thinking this evening. She kept him all to herself at the other end of the room.' Mrs. Barton laughed merrily, and Alice began to understand that her mother was approving her flirtation. That is the name that her mother would give her talk with Mr. Harding.