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.