Muslin. George Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ true enough; but then—' and May stopped, striving to readjust her ideas, which Violet's remark had suddenly disarranged. After a pause she said:

      'But does your mother intend to bring you to Dublin for the season? Are you going to be presented this year?'

      'I hope so. Mamma said I should be, last vacation.'

      'I shall take good care that I am. The best part of the hunting will be over, and I wouldn't miss the Castle balls for anything. Do you like officers?'

      The crudity of the question startled Alice, and it was with difficulty she answered she didn't know—that she had not thought about the matter.

      May and Violet continued the conversation; and over the lingering waste of yellow, all that remained to tell where the sun had set, the night fell like a heavy, blinding dust, sadly and regretfully, as the last handful of earth thrown upon a young girl's grave.

IV

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      In the tiny cornfields the reapers rose from their work to watch the carriage. Mr. Barton commented on the disturbed state of the country. Olive asked if Mr. Parnell was good-looking. A railway-bridge was passed and a pine-wood aglow with the sunset, and a footman stepped down from the box to open a swinging iron gate.

      This was Brookfield. Sheep grazed on the lawn, at the end of which, beneath some chestnut-trees, was the house. It had been built by the late Mr. Barton out of a farmhouse, but the present man, having travelled in Italy and been attracted by the picturesque, had built a verandah; and for the same reason had insisted on calling his daughter Olive.

      'Oh there, mamma!' cried Olive, looking out of the carriage window; and the two girls watched their mother, a pretty woman of forty, coming across the greensward to meet them.

      She moved over the greensward in a skirt that seemed a little too long—a black silk skirt trimmed with jet. As she came forward her daughters noticed that their mother dyed her hair in places where it might be suspected of turning grey. It was parted in the middle and she wore it drawn back over her ears and slightly puffed on either side in accordance with the fashion that had come in with the Empress Eugenie. Even in a photograph she was like a last-century beauty sketched by Romney in pastel—brown, languid, almond-shaped eyes, a thin figure a little bent. Even in youth it had probably resembled Alice's rather than Olive's, but neither had inherited her mother's hands—the most beautiful hands ever seen—and while they trifled with the newly bought foulards a warbling voice inquired if Olive was sure she was not tired.

      'Five hours in the train! And you, Alice? You must be starving, my dear, and I'm afraid the saffron buns are cold. Milord brought us over such a large packet to-day. We must have some heated up. They won't be a minute.'

      'Oh, mamma, I assure you I am not in the least hungry!' cried Olive.

      'La beauté n'a jamais faim, elle se nourrit d'elle même,' replied Lord Dungory, who had just returned from the pleasure-ground whither he had gone for a little walk with Arthur.

      'You will find Milord the same as ever—toujours galant; always thinking of la beauté, et les femmes.'

      Lord Dungory was the kind of man that is often seen with the Mrs. Barton type of woman. An elderly beau verging on the sixties, who, like Mrs. Barton, suggested a period. His period was very early Victorian, but he no longer wore a silk hat in the country. A high silk hat in Galway would have called attention to his age, so the difficulty of costume was ingeniously compromised by a tall felt, a cross between a pot and a chimney-pot. For collars, a balance had been struck between the jaw-scrapers of old time and the nearest modern equivalent; and in the tying of the large cravat there was a reminiscence, but nothing more, of the past generation.

      He had modelled himself, consciously or unconsciously, on Lord Palmerston, and in the course of conversation one gathered that he was on terms of intimacy with the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, and if the listener was credited with any erudition, allusion was made to the most celebrated artists and authors, and to their works. There was a celebrated Boucher in Dungory Castle, which Milord, it was hinted, had bought for some very small sum many years ago on the Continent; there was also a cabinet by Buhl and a statue supposed to be a Jean Gougon, and the proofs of their authenticity were sometimes spoken of after a set dinner-party. His speech was urbane, and, on all questions of taste, Lord Dungory's opinion was eagerly sought for. He gave a tone to the ideas put forward in the surrounding country houses, and it was through him that Mr. Barton held the title of a genius born out of due time. If Arthur, he said, had lived two centuries ago, when the gift of imagination was considered indispensable in the artist, he would have achieved high distinction. His subjects—The Bridal of Triermain and Julius Cæsar overturning the Altars of the Druids—would have been envied, perhaps stolen, by the Venetian painters. And this tribute to Arthur's genius, so generously expressed, enabled him to maintain the amenities of his life at Brookfield. He never forgot to knock at Arthur's studio-door, and the moment his eyes fell on a new composition, he spoke of it with respect; and he never failed to allude to it at lunch. He lunched at Brookfield every day. At half-past one his carriage was at the door. In the afternoons he went out to drive with Mrs. Barton or sat in the drawing-room with her. Four times in the week he remained to dinner, and did not return home until close on midnight.

      Whether he ever made any return to Mrs. Barton for her hospitalities, and, if so, in what form he repaid his obligations to her, was, when friends drew together, a favourite topic of conversation in the county of Galway. It had been remarked that the Bartons never dined at Dungory Castle except on state occasions; and it was well-known that the Ladies Cullen hated Mrs. Barton with a hatred as venomous as the poison hid in the fangs of adders.

      But Lord Dungory knew how to charm his tame snakes. For fortune they had but five thousand pounds each, and, although freedom and a London lodging were often dreamed of, the flesh-pots of Dungory Castle continued to be purchased at the price of smiles and civil words exchanged with Mrs. Barton. Besides, as they grew old and ugly, the Ladies Cullen had developed an inordinate passion for the conversion of souls. They had started a school of their own in opposition to the National school, which was under the direction of the priest, and to persuade the peasants to read the Bible and to eat bacon on Friday, were good works that could not be undertaken without funds; and these were obtained, it was said, by the visits of the Ladies Cullen to Brookfield.

      Mrs. Gould declared she could estimate to a fraction the prosperity of

       Protestantism in the parish by the bows these ladies exchanged with Mrs.

       Barton when their carriages crossed on the roads.

      'Here are the saffron buns at last, my dear children;' and Mrs. Barton pressed them upon her girls, saying that Milord had brought them from Dungory Castle especially for them. 'Take a bottom piece, Olive, and Alice, you really must … Well, if you won't eat, tell Milord about your play of King Cophetua and the beggar-maid. Arthur, tell me, how did you like the play, and how did the nuns like it? To think of my daughter, so prim and demure, writing a play, and on such a subject.'

      'But, mamma, what is there odd in the subject? We all know the old ballad.'

      'Yes, we all know the ballad,' Arthur answered; 'I sing stanzas of it to the guitar myself.' He began to chant to himself, and Mrs. Barton listened, her face slanted in the pose of the picture of Lady Hamilton; and Milord rejoiced in the interlude, for it gave him opportunity to meditate. Anna (Mrs. СКАЧАТЬ