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 Cæsar 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.