Sipping her coffee, her feet on the fender, she abandoned herself to memories of the afternoon. She had been to the Carmelite Church in Kensington, to hear the music of a new and very realistic Belgian composer; and, walking down the High Street after Mass, she and Owen had argued his artistic intentions. At the end of the High Street, he had proposed that they should walk in the Gardens. The broad walk was full of the colour of Spring and its perfume, the thick grass was like a carpet beneath their feet; they had lingered by a pond, and she had watched the little yachts, carrying each a portent of her own success or failure. The Albert Hall curved over the tops of the trees, and sheep strayed through the deep May grass in Arcadian peacefulness; but the most vivid impression was when they had come upon a lawn stretching gently to the water's edge. Owen had feared the day was too cold for sitting out, but at that moment the sun contradicted him with a broad, warm gleam. He had fetched two chairs from a pile stacked under a tree, and sitting on that lawn, swept by the shadow of softly moving trees, they had talked an hour or more. The scene came back to her as she sat looking into the fire. She saw the Spring, easily victorious amid the low bushes, capturing the rough branches of the elms one by one, and the distant slopes of the park, grey like a piece of faded tapestry. And as in a tapestry, the ducks came through the mist in long, pulsing flight, and when the day cleared the pea fowl were seen across the water, sunning themselves on the high branches. While watching the spectacle of the Spring, Owen had talked to Evelyn about herself, and now their entire conversation floated back, transposed into a higher key.
"I want your life to be a great success."
"Do you think anyone's life can be that?"
"That is a long discussion; if we seek the bottom of things, none is less futile than another. But what passes for success, wealth and renown, are easily within your reach.... If it be too much trouble to raise your hand, let me shake the branches, and they'll fall into your lap."
"I wonder if they would seem as precious to me when I had got them as they do now. Once I did not know what it was to despond, but I lost my pupils last winter, and everything seemed hopeless. I am not vain or egotistic; I do not pine for applause and wealth, but I should like to sing.... I've heard so much about my voice that I'm curious to know what people will think of it."
"Once I was afraid that you were without ambition, and were content to live unknown, a little suburban legend, a suburban might-have-been."
"That was long ago.... I've been thinking about myself a great deal lately. Something seems always crying within me, 'You're wasting your life; you must become a great singer and shine like a star in the world.'"
"That is the voice of vocation speaking within you, a voice that may not be disobeyed. It is what the swallows feel when the time for departure has come."
"Ah, yes, what the swallows feel."
"A yearning for that which one has never known, for distant places, for the sunshine which instinct tells us we must breathe."
"Oh, yes, that is it. I used to feel all that in the afternoons in that ornamental park. I used to stop in my walk, for I seemed to see far away, to perceive dimly as in a dream, another country."
"And since I came back have you wished to go away?"
"No ... for you come to see me, and when I go out with you I'm amused."
"I'm afraid I do little to amuse you."
"You do a great deal—you lend me books. I never cared to read, now I'm very fond of reading—and I think more."
"Of what do you think?"
"You see, I never met anyone like you before. You've travelled; you've seen everything; you know everything and everyone. When you come I seem to see in you all the grand world of fashion."
"Which you used to see far away as in a dream?"
"No, the world of fashion I did not think of till I saw you. Since you came back I have thought of it a little. You seem to express it somehow in your look and dress; and the men who nodded to you in Piccadilly, and the women who bowed to you, all wore the same look, and when they spoke they seemed to know all about you—where you were last summer, and where you are going to spend this autumn. Their friends are your friends; you're all like one family."
"You're very observant. I never noticed the things you speak of, but no doubt it is so. But society is ready to receive you; society, believe me, is most anxious for you."
After some pause she heard him say—
"But you must not delay to go abroad and study."
"Tell me, do you think the concerts will ever pay?"
"No, not in the sense of your requirements. Evelyn, since you ask me, I must speak the truth. Those concerts may come to pay their expenses, with a little over, but it is the veriest delusion to imagine that they will bring enough money to take you and your father abroad. Moreover, your father would have to resign his position at St. Joseph's, where he is required; there his mission is. It is painful for me to tell you these things, but I cannot see you waste your life."
"What you say is quite true.... I've known it all along."
"Only you have shut your eyes to it."
"Yes, that's it."
"Don't look so frightened, Evelyn. It was better that you should be brought face to face with the truth. You'll have to go abroad and study."
"And my father! Don't advise me to leave him. I couldn't do that."
"Why make my task more difficult than it is? I wish to be honest. I should speak just the same, believe me, if your father were present. Is not our first duty towards ourselves? The rest is vague and uncertain, the development of our own faculties is, after all, that which is most sure.... I'm uttering no paradox when I say that we serve others best by considering our own interests. Let us suppose that you sacrifice yourself, that you dedicate your life to your father, that you do all that conventional morality says you should do. You look after his house, you sing at his concerts, you give music lessons. Ten, fifteen years pass, and then, remembering what might have been, but what is no longer possible, you forgive him, and he, overcome with remorse for the wrong he did you, sinks into the grave broken-hearted."
"I should at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I had done my duty."
"Words, Evelyn, words. Take your life into your keeping, go abroad and study, come back a great success."
"He would never forgive me."
"You do not think so.... Evelyn, you do not believe that."
"But even if I wished to leave home, I could not. Where should I get the money? You have not thought what it would cost."
"Have you forgotten the knight that came to release the sleeping beauty of the woods from her bondage? Fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds would be ample. I can easily afford it."
"But I cannot afford to accept it. Father would not allow me."
"You can pay it all back."
"Yes, I could do that. But why don't you offer to help father instead?"
"Why are you what you are? Why am I interested in you?"
"If I went abroad to study, I should not see you again for a long while—two years."
"I could go to Paris."
She did not remember what answer she had made, if she had made any answer, but as she leaned forward and stirred the fire, she saw his hands, their strength and comeliness, the kindliness of his eyes. She was not sure that he was fond of, but she thought that she could make him like her. At that moment he seemed to take her in his arms and kiss her, and the illusion was so vivid that she was taken in an instant's swoon, and shuddered through her entire flesh. When her thoughts returned she found herself thinking of a volume of verses which had come to be mentioned as they walked through the Gardens. He had told her of the author, a Persian poet who had lived in a rose-garden a thousand years ago. He had compared life to a rose, an exquisite flower to be caught in the hand and enjoyed for a passionate moment, and had recited many of the verses, and she had listened, enchanted by the rapid interchange of sorrow, and gladness, and lofty resignation before the inevitable. Often it seemed as if her own soul were speaking in the verses. "So do not refuse to accept the flowers and fruit that hang in reach of your hands, for to-morrow you may be where there are none.... The caravan will have reached the nothing it set out from.... Surely the potter will not toss to hell the pots he marred in the making." She started from her reverie, and suddenly grew aware of his very words, "However we may strive to catch a glimpse of to-morrow, we must fall back on to-day as the only solid ground we have to stand on, though it be slipping momentarily from under our feet." She recalled the intonation of his sigh as he spoke of the inscrutable nature of things, and she wondered if he, too, with all his friends and possessions, was unhappy. She seemed to have exhausted her thoughts about him, and in the silence of her mind, her self came up for consideration.... Owen intended to ask her to go away with him; but he did not intend to marry her. It was shocking to think that he could be so wicked, and then with a thrill of pleasure that it would be much more exciting to run away with him than to be married to him by Father Railston. But how very wicked of her to think such things, and she was frightened to find that she could not think differently; and with sensations of an elopement clattering in her brain, she sat still striving to restrain her thoughts.
On leaving her at Victoria, he had walked down the Buckingham Palace Road, not quite knowing where he was going. Suddenly an idea struck him. He put up his stick, stopped a hansom, and drove to Georgina; for he was curious to see what impression she would make upon him. He spent an hour with her, and returned to Berkeley Square to dine alone. He was sure that he cared no more for Georgina, that she was less than nothing to him. He dismissed her from his thoughts, and fixed them on Evelyn. He had said he would send her a book. It stood next to his hand, on the shelf by the round table where he wrote his articles. After dinner, he would walk from the dining-room into the library, take down the volume and pack it up, leaving orders that it should be sent off by the first post.
When man ceased to capture women, he reflected, man invented art whereby he might win them. The first melody blown through a reed pipe was surely intended for woman's ears. The first verses were composed in a like intention. Afterwards man began to take an interest in art for its own sake.... Women, having no necessity for art, have not been artists. The idea amused him, and he remembered that while Evelyn's romantic eyes and gold hair were sufficient to win his regard, he had availed himself of a dozen devices to tempt her. Suddenly his face grew grave, and he asked himself how this flirtation was to end. As a sufficient excuse for seeing her he was taking music lessons; he wrote to her every other day and often sent her books and music. They had met in London.... He had been observed walking with her, and at Lady Ascott's lunch the conversation had suddenly turned on a tall girl with gold hair and an undulating walk. Pointed observations had been made.... Lady Lovedale had looked none too well pleased. He didn't wish to be cynical, but he did want to know whether he was going to fall in love?... They had now arrived at that point when love-making or an interruption in their intimacy was imperative. He did not regret having offered her the money to go abroad to study, it was well he should have done so, but he should not have said, "ButI'llgo to see you in Paris." She was a clever girl, and knew as well as he how such adventures must end.... She was a religious girl, a devout Catholic, and as he had himself been brought up in that religion, he knew how it restrained the sexual passion or fashioned it in the mould of its dogma. But we are animals first, we are religious animals afterwards. Religious defences must yield before the pressure of the more original instinct, unless, indeed, hers was a merely sexual conscience. The lowest forms of Anglicanism are reduced to perceiving conscience nowhere except in sex. The Catholic was more concerned with matters of faith. Not in France, Italy or Spain did Catholicism enter so largely into the private life of the individual as it did in England. The foreign, or to be more exact, the native Catholic had worn the yoke till it fitted loose on his shoulders. His was a more eclectic Christianity; he took what suited him and left the rest. But in England Romanism had never shaken itself free from the Anglican conscience. The convert never acquired the humanities of Rome, and in addition the lover had to contend against the confessional. But in Evelyn's case he could set against the confessional the delirium of success, the joy of art, the passion of emulation, jealousy and ambition, and last, but far from least, the ache of her own passionate body. Remembering the fear and humility with which he had been used to approach the priest, and the terror of eternal fire in which he had waited for him to pronounce absolution, Owen paused to think how far such belief was from him now. Yet he had once believed—in a way. He wondered at the survival of such a belief in the nineteenth century, and asked himself if confession were not inveterate in man. The artist in his studio, the writer in his study, strive to tell their soul's secret; the peasant throws himself at the feet of the priest, for, like them, he would unburden himself of that terrible weight of inwardness which is man. Is not the most mendacious mistress often taken with the desire of confession ... the wish to reveal herself? Upon this bed rock of human nature the confessional has been built. And Owen admired the humanity of Rome. Rome was terribly human. No Church, he reflected, was so human. Her doctrine may seem at times quaint, medieval, even gross, but when tested by the only test that can be applied, power to reach to human needs, and administer consolation to the greatest number, the most obtuse-minded cannot fail to see that Rome easily distances her rivals. Her dogma and ceremonial are alike conceived in extraordinary sympathy with man's common nature....
Our lives are enveloped in mystery, the scientist concedes that, and the woof of which the stuff of life is woven is shot through with many a thread of unknown origin, untraceable to any earthly shuttle. There is a mystery, and in the elucidation of that mystery man never tires; the Sovereign Pontiff and the humblest crystal gazer are engaged in the same adventure. The mystery is so intense, and lives so intimately in all, that Rome dared to come forward with a complete explanation. And her necessarily perfunctory explanation she drapes in a ritual so magnificent, that even the philosopher ceases to question, and pauses abashed by the grandeur of the symbolism. High Mass in its own home, under the arches of a Gothic cathedral, appealed alike to the loftiest and humblest intelligence. Owen paused to think if there was not something vulgar in the parade of the Mass. A simple prayer breathed by a burdened heart in secret awaked a more immediate and intimate response in him. That was Anglicanism. Perhaps he preferred Anglicanism. The truth was, he was deficient in the religious instinct.
Awaking from his reverie, he raised himself from the mantelpiece against which he was leaning. Never had he thought so brilliantly, and he regretted that no magical stenographer should be there to register his thoughts as they passed. But they were gone.... Resuming his position against the mantelpiece, he continued his interrupted train of thoughts.
There would be the priest's interdiction ... unless, indeed, he could win Evelyn to agnosticism. In his own case he could imagine a sort of religious agnosticism. But is a woman capable of such a serene contemplation and comprehension of the mystery, which perforce we must admit envelops us, and which often seems charged with murmurs, recollections and warnings of the under world? Does not woman need the grosser aid of dogma to raise her sensual nature out of complete abjection? But all this was very metaphysical. The probability was that Evelyn would lead the life of the ordinary prima donna until she was fifty, that she would then retire to a suburb in receipt of a handsome income, and having nothing to do, she would begin to think again of the state of her soul. The line of her chin deflected; some would call it a weak chin, but he had observed the same in men of genius—her father, for instance. None could be more resolute than he in the pursuance of his ideas. The mother's thin, stubborn mouth must find expression somewhere in her daughter. But where? Evelyn's mouth was thin and it drooped at the ends.... But she was only twenty; at five-and-twenty, at thirty, she might be possessed by new ideas, new passions.... The moment we look into life and examine the weft a little, what a mystery it becomes, how occult the design, and out of what impenetrable darkness the shuttle passes, weaving a strange pattern, harmonious in a way, and yet deducible to none of our laws! This little adventure, the little fact of his becoming Evelyn's lover, was sown with every eventuality.... If, instead of his winning her to agnosticism, she should win him to Rome! They then would have to separate or marry, otherwise they would burn in hell for ever.
But he would never be fool enough as to accept such a story as that again. That God should concern himself at all in our affairs was strange enough, that he should do so seemed little creditable to him, but that he should manage us to the extent of the mere registration of a cohabitation in the parish books was—. Owen flung out his arms in an admirable gesture of despair, and crossed the room. After a while he returned to the fireplace calmer, and he considered the question anew. By no means did he deny the existence of conscience; his own was particularly exact on certain points. In money matters he believed himself to be absolutely straight. He had never even sold a friend a horse knowing it to be unsound; and he had always avoided—no, not making love to his friends' wives (to whose wives are you to make love if not to your friends'?)—he had avoided making women unhappy. But much more than in morals his conscience found expression in art. That Evelyn should use her voice except for the interpretation of masterpieces would shock him quite as much as an elopement would shock the worthy Fathers of St. Joseph's. He smiled at his thoughts, and remembered that it was through fear of not making a woman happy that he had not married. He hated unhappiness. His wish had always been to see people happy. Was not that why he wished to go away with Evelyn? A particularly foolish woman had once told him that she liked going out hunting because she liked to see people amused.... He did not pretend to such altruism as hers, and he remembered how he used to watch for her at the window as she came across the square with her dog. But Evelyn was quite different. He could not have her to luncheon or tea, and send her back to her father. Somehow, it would not seem fair to her. No; he must break with her, or they must go away together. Which was it to be? Mrs. Hartrick had written three times that week! And there was Lady Lovedale. She had promised to come to tea on Friday. Was he going to renounce the list, or was he going to put all his eggs in one basket? The list promised much agreeable intercourse, but it was wholly lacking in unexpectedness. He had been through it all before, and knew how each story would end. In mutual indifference or in a tiff because he wearied of accompanying her to all racecourses and all theatres. Another would pretend that her husband was jealous, and that she daren't come to see him any more. But Evelyn would be quite different. In her case, he could not see further than driving to Charing Cross and getting into the mail train for Paris. She was worth the list, not a doubt of it. If he were only sure that he loved her, he would not hesitate. He was interested in her, he admired her, but did he love her? A genuine passion alone would make an elopement excusable.
One of his moralities was that a man who did not love his mistress was a beast, and that a man who loved a woman who wasn't, was a fool. Another was that although every man of the world knew aliaisonwould not last for ever, he should not begin one unless it seemed as if it were going to. In other words, you should not be able to see the end before you began. But he had never even kissed Evelyn, and it was impossible even to guess, even approximately, if you were going to like a girl before you had kissed her. There could be no harm in kissing her. Then, if he was sure he loved her, they might go away together. Of course, there were hypocrites who would say that he had seduced her, that he had ruined her, robbed Mr. Innes of his only daughter. But he was not concerned with conventional, but with real morality. If he did not go away with her, what would happen? He had told her the truth in the park that morning, and he believed every word he had said.... If she did not leave her father she would learn to hate him. It was terrible to think of, but it was so, and nothing could change it. He tried to recall his exact words, and easily imagined her father stricken with remorse, and Evelyn looking across the table, hating him in spite of herself. But if he could persuade her to leave him for two years he would engage to bring her back a great singer. And what an interest it would be to watch the development of that voice, surely the most beautiful soprano he had ever heard! She might begin with "Margaret" and "Norma," if she liked, for in singing these popular operas she would acquire the whole of her voice, and also the great reputation which should precede and herald the final stage of her career. "Isolde," "Brunnhilde," "Kundry," Wagner's finest works, had remained unsung—they en merely howled. Evelyn should be the first to sing them. His eyes glowed with subdued passion as he thought of an afternoon, some three years hence, in the great theatre planned by the master himself, when he should see her rush in as the Witch Kundry. The marvellous evocation of Arabia flashed upon him.... Would he ever hear her sing it?... Yes, if she would consent to go away with him he would hear her sing it. But would she go away with him? Her love of her father, and her religion, might prevent her.... She might not even care for him.... She might be thinking of marrying him. Was it possible that she was such a fool! What good would it do her to marry him? She could not go on the stage as Lady Asher. Lady Asher as Kundry! Could anything be more grotesque? How beset life was with difficulties! Without her vocation she was no longer the Evelyn Innes he was in love with.... Someone else, a pretty, interesting girl, the daughter of a suburban organist. To marry her now would be to ruin her. But he might marry her five or six years hence, for there was no reason why she should continue singing "Isolde" and "Brunnhilde" till she had no shred of voice left. When she had established a standard she would have achieved her mission, then it would be for others to maintain the standard. In the full blaze of her glory she might become Lady Asher. He would have to end his life somehow, that way as well as another. Five years are a long while—anything might happen. She might leave him for someone else ... anything—anything—anything might happen. It was impossible to divine the turn human lives would take. The simple fact of his elopement contained a dozen different stories in germ. Each would find opportunities of development; they would struggle for mastery; which would succeed?... Keep women you couldn't; he had long ago found out that. Marry them, and they came to hate the way you walked across the room; remain their lover, and they jilted you at the end of six months. He had hardly ever heard of aliaisonlasting more than a year or eighteen months, and Evelyn would meet all the nicest men in Europe. All Europe would be his rival—really it would be better to give her up.... She was the kind of woman who, if she once let herself go, would play the devil. Turning from the fire he looked into the glass.... He admitted to eight-and-thirty, he was forty—a very well-preserved forty. There were times when he did not look more than five-and-thirty. His hair was paler than it used to be; it was growing a little thin on the forehead, otherwise he was the same as when he was five-and-twenty. But he was forty, and a man of forty cannot marry a prima donna of twenty. Five pleasant years they might have together, five delicious years; it were vain to expect more. But he would not get her to go away with him under a promise of marriage; all such deception he held to be as dishonourable as cheating at cards. So in their next interview it would have to be suggested that there could be no question of marriage, at least for the present. At the same time he would have her understand that he intended to shirk no responsibility. But if he were to tire of her! That was another possibility, and a hateful one; he would prefer that she should jilt him. Perhaps it would be better to give her up, and throw his fate in with the list. But he was tired of country houses, with or without aliaison, and felt that he could not go through another season's hunting; he had no horses that suited him, and didn't seem to be able to find any. To go abroad with Evelyn, watch over the cultivation of her voice, see her fame rising, that was his mission! The only question to decide was whether he was in love with her. He would not hesitate a moment if he were only sure of that. He thought of the women he knew. Georgina was the first to come up in his mind. He had been to see her, and had come away at a loss to understand what he had ever seen in her. She had struck him as vulgar and middle-class, sly, with a taste for intrigue. He remembered that was how she had struck him when he first saw her. But if anyone had described her as vulgar and middle-class six months ago. Good heavens!
The day grew too fine, as he said, for false notes, so the music lesson was abandoned, and they went to sit in the garden behind the picture gallery, a green sward with high walls covered with creeper, and at one end a great cedar with a seat built about the trunk; a quiet place rife with songs of birds, and unfrequented save by them. They had taken with them Omar's verses, and Evelyn hoped that he would talk to her about them, for the garden of the Persian poet she felt to be separated only by a wicket from theirs. But Owen did not respond to her humour. He was prepense to argue about the difficulties of her life, and of the urgent necessity of vanquishing these.
He had noticed, he said, as they sat in the park, that she had a weak face. Her thoughts were far away; he had caught her face, as it were, napping, and had seen through it to the root of her being. The conclusion at which he had arrived was that she was not capable of leading an independent life.
"Am I not right? Isn't it so?"
"You think that because I don't leave father and go abroad."
"You might go abroad and lead a dependent life; you might stay at home and lead an independent life."
He asked her what offers of marriage she had had.
One was from the Vicar, a widower, a man of fifty, the other from a young man in a solicitor's office. She did not care for either, and had not entertained their proposals for a second.
"If you marry anyone, it must be a duke. Life is a battle; society will get the better of us unless we get the better of society. Everyone must realise that—every young man, every young woman. We must conquer or be conquered."
Society, he argued, did not require a chaperon from her; society would, indeed, resent a chaperon if she were to appear with one. Society not only granted her freedom, but demanded that she should exercise it. As a freelance she would be taken notice of, as a respectable, marriageable girl she would be passed over. The cradle and the masterpiece were irreconcilable ideals. He drew an amusing picture of the prima donna's husband, the fellow who waits with a scarf ready to wind it round the throat of his musical instrument; the fellow who is always on the watch lest someone should walk off with his means of subsistence. Evelyn listened because she liked to hear him talk; she knew that he was trying to influence her with argument, but it was he himself who was influencing her, she dreaded his presence, not his argument.
She got up and walked across the sward; and as they returned through the flowery village street, the faint May breeze shed the white chestnut bloom about their feet. It seemed to him better to say nothing; there are times when silence is more potent than speech. They were walking under the trees of the old Dulwich street, and so charming were the hedge-hidden gardens, and the eighteenth-century houses with white porticoes, that Owen could not but think Dulwich at that moment seemed the natural nativity of the young girl's career. A few moments after they were at Dowlands. She was trembling, and had no strength of will to refuse to ask him in. She would have had the strength if she had not been obliged to give him her hand. She had tried to bid him good-bye without giving her hand, and had not succeeded, and while he held her hand her lips said the words without her knowing it. She spoke unconsciously, and did not know what she had said till she had said it.
And while they waited for tea, Evelyn lay back in a wicker chair thinking. He had said that life without love was a desert, and many times the conversation trembled on the edge of a personal avowal, and now he was playing love music out of "Tristan" on the harpsichord. The gnawing, creeping sensuality of the phrase brought little shudders into her flesh; all life seemed dissolved into a dim tremor and rustling of blood; vague colour floated into her eyes, and there were moments when she could hardly restrain herself from jumping to her feet and begging of him to stop.... The servant brought in the tea, and she thought she would feel better when the music ceased. But neither did the silence nor the tea help her. He sat opposite her, his eyes fixed upon her, that half-kindly, half-cynical face of his showing through the gold of his moustache. He seemed to know that she could not follow the conversation, and seemed determined to drive the malady that was devouring her to a head. He continued to speak of the motive of the love call, how it is interwoven with the hunting fanfare; when the fanfare dies in the twilight, how it is then heard in the dark loneliness of the garden. She heard him speak of the handkerchief motive, of thirty violins playing three notes in ever precipitated rhythm, until we feel that the world reels behind the woman, that only one thing exists for her—Tristan. A giddiness gathered in Evelyn's brain, and she fell back in her chair, slightly to the left side, and letting her hand slip towards him, said, with a beseeching look—
"I cannot go on talking, I am too tired."
It seemed as if she were going to faint, and this made it easy and natural for him to take her hand, to put his arm about her, and then to whisper—
"Evelyn, dear, what is the matter?"
She opened her eyes; their look was sufficient answer.
"Dearest Evelyn," he said; and bending over, he kissed her on the cheek.
"This is very foolish of me," she said, and throwing her arm about his neck, she kissed him on the mouth. "But you are fond of me?" she said impulsively, laying her hand on his shoulder. It was a movement full of affectionate intimacy.
"Yes," he said, moving her face again towards him. "I love you, I've always loved you."
"No," she said, "you didn't, not always; I know when you began to care for me."
"When?"
"When you returned from Greece, at the moment when you said you wanted me to like you. Is it not true?"
Owen dared not tell her that it was at the moment of kissing her that he had really begun to love her. In that moment he had entered into her atmosphere; it was fragrant as a flower, and it had decided him to use every effort to become her lover.
"No," she said, "you must not kiss me again."
She got up from the low wicker chair; he followed her, and they sat close together on two low seats. He put his arm round her and said—
"I love to kiss you.... Why do you turn away your head?"
"Because it is wrong; I shall be miserable to-night."
"You don't think it wrong to kiss me?"
"Yes, I do."
Then turning her face to his, she kissed him.
"Who taught you to kiss like that?"
"No one, I never kissed anyone before—father, of course. You know what I mean."
"She'll be an adorable mistress," he thought, "and in four years the greatest singer in England. I shall get very fond of her. I like her very much as it is, and when she gets over her religious scruples—when I've reformed her—she'll be enchanting. It is lucky she met me; without me she'd have come to nothing."
She asked him what he was thinking about, and he answered of the happiness he had begun to feel was in store for them.
"What happiness?" she asked; and he answered—
"The happiness of seeing each other constantly—the happiness of lovers. Now we must see each other more often."
"How often? Every day?"
He wondered what was the exact colour of her eyes, and he pressed her to answer. At last she said—
"You cannot come here oftener than you do at present. I'm deceiving father about these lessons. What will you do if he asks you to play to him? What excuse will you give? You daren't attempt the simplest exercise, you haven't got over the difference of the bowing; you'd play false notes all the time."
"Yes," he said; "I've not made much progress, have I?"
"No, you haven't; but that isn't my fault."
"But the days I don't see you seem so long!"
"Do you think they do not seem long to me? I've nothing to think about but you."
"Then, on your weariest days, come and see me. We can always see each other in Berkeley Square. Send me a wire saying you are coming."
"I could not come to see you," she said, still looking at him fixedly; "you know that I could not.... Then why do you ask me?"
"Because I want you."
"You know that I'd like to come."
"Then, if you do, you'll come. I don't believe in temptations that we don't yield to."
"I suppose that the temptation that we yield to is the temptation?"
"Of course. But, Evelyn, you are not going to waste your life in Dulwich. Come and see me to-morrow and, if you like, we'll decide."
"On what?"
"You know what I mean, dearest."
"Yes, I think I do," she said, smiling at once sadly and ardently; "but I'm afraid it wouldn't succeed. I'm not the kind of woman to play the part to advantage."
"I'm very fond of you, and I think you're very fond of me."
"You don't think about it—you know I am."
"Then why did you say you would not come and see me?"
"I did not say so. But something tells me that if I did go away with you it would not succeed."
"Why do you think that?"
"I don't know. Something whispers that it wouldn't succeed. All my people were good people—my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. I never had a relative against whom anything could be said, so I don't know why I am what I am. For I'm only half good. It is you who make me bad, Owen; it isn't nice of you." She flung her arms about him, and then recoiled from him in a sudden revulsion of feeling.
"When you go away I shall be miserable; I shall repent of all this ... I'm horrid." She covered her face in her hands. "I didn't know I was like this."
A moment after she reached out her hand to him saying—
"You're not angry with me? I can't help it if I'm like this. I should like to go and see you; it would be so much to me. But I must not. But why mustn't I?"
"I know no reason, except that you don't care for me."
"But you know that isn't so."
"Come, dearest, be reasonable. You're not going to stop here all your life playing the viola da gamba. The hour of departure has come," he said, perceiving her very thought; "be reasonable, come and see me to-morrow. Come to lunch, and I'll arrange. You know that you—"
"Yes, I believe that," she said, in response to a change which had come into her appreciation. "But can I trust myself? Suppose I did go away, and repented and left you. Where should I go? I could not come back here. Father would forgive me, I daresay, but I could not come back here."
"'Repented,' Those are fairy tales," he said lifting her gold hair from her ear and kissing it. "A woman does not leave the man who adores her."
"You told me they often did."
"How funny you are.... They do sometimes, but not because they repent."
Her head was on his shoulder, and she stood looking at him a long while without speaking.
"Then you do love me, dearest? Tell me so again."
Kissing her gently on the mouth and eyes, he answered—
"You know very well that I do. Come and see me to-morrow. Say you will, for I must go now."
"Go now!"
"Do you know what time it is? It is past seven."
She followed him to the gate of the little garden. The lamps were lighted far away in the suburbs. Again he asked her to come and see him.
"I cannot to-morrow; to-morrow will be Sunday."
His footsteps echoed through the chill twilight, and seeing a thin moon afloat like a feather in the sky, she thought of Omar's moon, that used to seek the lovers in their garden, and that one evening sought one of them in vain.
There was no other place except the picture gallery where they could see each other alone. But the dignity of Velasquez and the opulence of Rubens distracted their thoughts, and they were ill at ease on a backless seat in front of a masterpiece. Owen regretted the Hobbema; it was less aggressive than the colonnade. A sun-lit clearing in a wood and a water mill raised no moral question. He turned his eyes from the dancers, but however he resisted them, their frivolous life found its way into the conversation. They were the wise ones, he said. They lived for art and love, and what else was there in life? A few sonatas, a few operas, a few pictures, a few books, and a love story; we had always to come back to that in the end. He spoke with conviction, his only insincerity being the alteration of a plural into a singular. But no, he did not think he had lied; he had spoken what seemed to him the truth at the present moment. Had he used the singular instead of the plural a fortnight ago, he would have lied, but within the last week his feelings for Evelyn had changed. If she had broken with him a week ago, he would have found easy consolation in the list, but now it was not women, but a woman that he desired. A mere sexual curiosity, and the artistic desire to save a beautiful voice from being wasted, had given way to a more personal emotion in which affection was beginning. Looking at him, thinking over what he had just said, unable to stifle the hope that those women in the picture were the wise ones, she heard life calling her. The art call and the love call, subtly interwoven, were modulated now on the violins now on the flutes of an invisible orchestra. At the same moment his immeshed senses, like greedy fish, swam hither and thither, perplexed and terrified, finding no way of escape, and he dreaded lest he had lost his balance and fallen into the net he had cast so often. He had begun to see that she was afraid of the sin, and not at all of him. She had never asked him if he would always love her—that she seemed to take for granted—and he had, or fancied he had, begun to feel that he would never cease to love her. He looked into the future far enough to see that it would be she who would tire of him, and that another would appear two or three years hence who would appeal to her sensual imagination just as he did to-day. She would strive to resist it, she would argue with herself, but the enticing illusion would draw her as in a silken net. He was now engaged in the destruction of her moral scruples—in other words, making the way easy for his successor.
They were in the gallery alone, and, taking her hand, he considered in detail the trouble thisliaisonwould bring in its train. He no longer doubted that she would go abroad with him sooner or later. He hoped it would be sooner, for he had begun to perceive the absurdity of his visits to Dulwich. The question was whether she was worth an exile in a foreign country. He would have to devote himself to her and to her interests. She would have a chaperon. There would be no use in their openly living together—that he could not stand. But at that moment the exquisite happiness of seeing her every day, coming into the room where she was reading or singing, and kissing her as he leaned over her chair affectionately, as a matter of course, deriving his enjoyment from the prescriptive right to do so, and then talking to her about ordinary affairs of life, came upon him suddenly like a vision; and this imagined life was so intense that for one moment it was equivalent to the reality. He saw himself taking her home from the theatre at night in the brougham. In the next instant they were in the train going to Bayreuth. In the next he saw her as Kundry rush on to the stage. He felt that, whatever it cost him, that was the life he must obtain. He felt that he could not live if he did not acquire it, and so intense was the vision that, unable to endure its torment, he got up and proposed they should go into the garden and sit under the cedar.
They were alone in the garden as they were in the gallery, but lovers are averse to open spaces, and Owen felt that their appearance coincided too closely with that of lovers in many popular engravings. He hoped he was not observed, and regretted he had often spoken of the picture gallery to his friends. An unlucky chance might bring one of them down.
It was in this garden, amid the scent and colour of May, that the most beautiful part of their love story was woven. It was in this garden that they talked about love and happiness, and the mystery of the attraction of one person to another, and whilst listening to him, a poignant memory of the afternoon when he had first kissed her often crossed her mind. Little faintnesses took her in the eyes and heart. Their voices broke, and it seemed that they could not continue to talk any longer of life and art. It was in this garden that they forgot each other. Their thoughts wandered far away, and then, when one called the other's attention, he or she relinquished scenes and sensations and came back appearing suddenly like someone out of a mist. Each asked the other what he or she had been dreaming. Once he told her his dream. It was of a villa in the middle of a large garden surrounded by chestnut trees and planted with rhododendrons. In this villa there dwelt a great singer whose name was a glory in the world, and to this villa there came very often a tall, thin, ugly man, and, seeing the beautiful singer walking with him, the folk wondered how she could love him.
It was a sort of delicious death, a swooning ecstasy, an absorption of her individuality in his. Just as the spring gradually displaced the winter by a new branch of blossom, and in that corner of the garden by the winsome mauve of a lilac bush, without her knowing it his ideas caught root in her. New thoughts and perceptions were in growth within her, and every day she discovered the new where she had been accustomed to meet the familiar idea. She seemed to be slipping out of herself as out of a soft, white garment, unconsciously, without any effort on her part.
Very often they discussed whether sacrifice of self is not the first of the sins against life. "That is the sin," he said, "that cries loudest to Nature for vengeance. To discover our best gift from Nature, and to cultivate that gift, is the first law of life." If she could not accept this theory of life as valid and justifiable, she had at least begun to consider it. Another of Owen's ideas that interested her was his theory of beauty. He said that he could not accept the ordinary statement that a woman was beautiful and stupid. Beauty and stupidity could not exist in the same face, stupidity being the ugliest thing on earth; and he contended that two-thirds of human beauty were the illumination of matter by the intelligence, and but one-third proportion and delicacy of line. After some hesitation, he admitted that at first he had been disappointed in her, but now everything about her was an enchantment, and when she was not present, he lived in memories of her. He spoke without emphasis, almost as if he were speaking to himself, and she could not answer for delight.
Her father was vaguely conscious of some change in his daughter, and when one day he heard her singing "Faust," he was perplexed; and when she argued that it was a beautiful and human aspiration, he looked at her as if he had never seen her before. He asked her how she had come to think such a thing, and was perplexed by her embarrassments. She was sorry for her liking for Gounod's melodies. It seemed to alienate them; they seemed to have drifted apart. She saw a silently widening distance, as if two ships were moving away. One day he asked her if she were going to communion next Sunday. She answered that she did not think so, and sat thinking a long while, for she had become suddenly aware that she was not as pious as she used to be. She did not think that Owen's arguments had touched her faith, but she no longer felt the same interest in religion; and in thinking over this change, which seemed so independent of her own will, she grew pensive and perplexed. Her melancholy was a sort of voluptuous meditation. She was conscious all the while of Owen's presence. It was as if he were standing by her, and she felt that he must be thinking of her.
He had often spoken of going away with her; she had smiled plaintively, never regarding an elopement as possible. But one evening her father had gone to dine with a certain Roman prelate who believed in the advantage to the Catholic Church of a musical reformation. And she had gone to meet Owen, who had driven from London. They had walked two hours in the lanes, and when she got home she ran to her room and undressed hurriedly, thinking how delightful it would be to lie awake in the dark and remember it all. And feeling the cool sheets about her she folded her arms and abandoned herself to every recollection. Her imagination, heightened as by a drug, enabled her to see the white, dusty road and the sickly, yellow moon rising through the branches. Again she was standing by him, her arms were on his neck; again they stood looking into the vague distance, seeing the broken paling in the moonlight. There were his eyes and hands and lips to think about, and when she had exhausted these memories, others sprang upon her. It was in the very centre of her being that she was thinking of the moment when she had spied his horse's head over the hill top. She had recognised his silhouette against the sky. He had whipped up the horse, he had thrown the reins to the groom, he had sprung from the step. The evening was then lighted by the sunset, and as the sky darkened, their love had seemed to grow brighter. In comparison with this last meeting, all past meetings seemed shadowy and unreal. She had never loved him before, and if her smile had dwindled when he asked her to come away with him, she had liked to hear him say the dogcart was waiting at the inn. But when they stood by the stile where cattle were breathing softly, and the moon shone over the sheepfold like a shepherd's lantern, her love had grown wilful, and she had liked to say that she would go away with him. She knew not whether she could fulfil her promise, but it had been a joy to give it. They had walked slowly towards Dulwich, the groom had brought round the dog-cart; Owen had asked her once more to get in. Oh, to drive away with him through the night! "Owen, it is impossible," she said; "I cannot, at least not now. But I will one day very soon, sooner perhaps than you think."
He had driven away, and, standing on the moon-whitened road, she had watched the white dust whirl about the wheels.
One of the difficulties in the indulgence of these voluptuous meditations was that they necessitated the omission of her evening prayers. She could not kneel by her bedside and pray to God to deliver her from evil, all the while nourishing in her heart the intention of abandoning herself to the thought of Owen the moment she got into bed. Nor did the omission of her evening prayers quite solve the difficulty, for when she could think no more of Owen, the fear of God returned. She dared not go to sleep, and lay terrified, dreading the devil in every corner of the room. Lest she might die in her sleep and be summoned before the judgment seat, she lay awake as long as she could.
When she fell asleep she dreamed of the stage when the world was won, and when it seemed she had only to stretch her hands to the sky to take the stars. But in the midst of her triumph she perceived that she could no longer sing the music the world required; a new music was drumming in her ears, drowning the old music, a music written in a melancholy mode, and played on invisible harps. Owen told her it was madness to listen, and she strove to close her ears against it. In great trouble of mind she awoke; it was only a dream, and she had not lost her voice. She lay back upon the pillow and tried to recall the music which she had heard on the invisible harps, but already it was forgotten; it faded from her brain like mist from the surface of a mere. But the humour that the dream had created endured after the dream was dead. She felt no longer as she had felt over night, and lay in a sort of obtuse sensibility of conscience. She got up and dressed, her mind still clouded and sullen, and her prayers were said in a sort of middle state between fervour and indifference. Her father attributed her mood to the old cause; several times he was on the point of speaking, and she held him for the moment by the lappet of his coat and looked affectionately into his face. But something told her that if she were to confide her trouble to anyone, she would lose the power she had acquired over herself. Something told her that all the strength on her side was reposed in the secrecy of the combat. If it were known, she could imagine herself saying—
"Well, nothing matters now; let us go away, Owen."
He was coming to see her between eleven and twelve—at the very time he knew her father would be away from home, and this very fact stimulated her ethical perception. Her manner was in accordance with her mood, and the moment he entered he saw that something had happened, that she was no longer the same Evelyn from whom he had parted a couple of nights before.
"Well, I can see you have changed your mind; so we are not going away together. Evelyn, dear, is it not so? Tell me."
He was a little ashamed of his hypocrisy, for, as he had driven home in the dogcart, the adventure he was engaged in had appeared to him under every disagreeable aspect. He could not but think that the truth of the story would leak out, and he could hear all the women he knew speaking of Evelyn as a girl he had picked up in the suburbs—an organist's daughter. He had thought again of the responsibility that going away with this girl imposed upon him, and he had come to the conclusion that it would be wiser to drop the whole thing and get out of it while there was time. That night, as he lay in bed, he saw himself telling people how many operas she knew; and the tales of her successes in Vienna and Naples.... But he need not always be with her, she would have a chaperon; and he had fallen asleep thinking which among his friends would undertake the task for him. In the morning he had awakened in the same nervous indecision, and had gone to Dulwich disheartened, provoked at his own folly. It therefore happened that her refusal to go away with him coincided exactly with his humour. So all that was necessary was a mere polite attempt to persuade her that she was sacrificing her career, but without too much insistence on the point; a promise to call again soon; then a letter saying he was unwell, or was going to Paris or to Riversdale. A month after they could meet at a concert, but he must be careful not to be alone with her, and very soon the incident—after all, he had only kissed her—would be forgotten. But as he sat face to face with her, all his carefully considered plans seemed to drop behind him in ruins, and he doubted if he would be able to deny himself the pleasure of taking her away. That is to say, if he could induce her to go, which no longer seemed very sure. She might be one of those women in whom the sense of sin was so obdurate that they could not but remain virtuous.
But of what was she thinking? he asked himself; and he scanned the yielding face, reading the struggle in a sudden suppressed look or nervous twitching of the lips.
"Dearest Evelyn, I love you. Life would be nothing without you."
"Owen, I am very fond of you, but there would be no use in my going away with you. I should be miserable. I know I am not the kind of woman who would play the part."
Her words roused new doubts. It would be useless to go away with her if she were to be miserable all the while. He did not want to make anyone miserable; he wanted to make people happy. He indulged in a moment of complacent self-admiration, and then reflected that this adventure would cost a great deal of time and money, and if he were really to get nothing out of it but tears and repentance, he had better take her at her word, bid her good-bye, and write to-morrow saying he was called away to Riversdale on business.
"But you are not cross with me? You will come to see me all the same?"
He wondered if she were tortured with as many different and opposing desires as he was. Perhaps not, and he watched her tender, truthful eyes. In her truthful nature, filled full of passion and conscience, there was no place for any slightest calculation. But he was mistrustful, and asked himself if all this resistance was a blind to induce him to marry her. If he thought that, he would drop her at once. This suspicion was lost sight of in a sudden lighting of her hair, caused by a slight turning of her head. Beyond doubt she was a fresh and delicious thing, and if he did not take her, someone else would, and then he would curse his indecision; and if she had a great voice, he would for ever regret he had not taken her when he could get her. If he did not take her now, the chance was gone for ever. She was the adventure he had dreamed all his life. At last it had come to him, perhaps through the sheer force of his desire, and now, should he refrain from the dream, or should he dream it? He saw the exquisite sensual life that awaited him and her in Paris. He saw her, pale and pathetic, and thought of her eager eyes and lips.
Evelyn sat crestfallen and repentant, but her melancholy was a pretty, smiling melancholy, and her voice had not quite lost the sparkle and savour of wit. She regretted her sin, admitted her culpability, and he was forced to admit that sorrow and virtue sat becomingly upon her. Her mood was in a measure contagious, and he talked gently and gaily about herself, and the day when the world would listen to her with delight and approbation. But while he talked, he was like a man on the rack. He was dragged from different sides, and the questioner was at his ear.
Hitherto he had never compromised himself in his relations with women. As he had often said of himself, he had inspired no great passion, but a multitude of caprices. But now he had begun to feel that it is one love and not twenty that makes a life memorable, he wished to redeem his life from intrigues, and here was the very chance he was waiting for. But habit had rendered him cowardly, and this seduction frightened him almost as much as marriage had done. To go away with her, he felt, was equivalent to marrying her. His life would never be the same again. The list would be lost to him for ever, no more lists for him; he would be known as the man who lived with—lived with whom? A girl picked up in the suburbs, and sang rather prettily. If she were a great singer he would not mind, but he could not stand a mediocre singer about whom he would have to talk continual nonsense: conspiracies that were in continual progress against her at Covent Garden, etc. He had heard all that sort of thing before.... What should he do? He must make up his mind. It might be as well if he were to ask her to come to his house; then in some three or four months he would be able to see if she were worth the great sacrifice he was going to make for her.
Her hand lay on her knees. He knew that he should not take it, but it lay on her knees so plaintively, that in spite of all his resistance he took it and examined it. It did not strike him as a particularly beautiful hand. It was long and white, and exceedingly flexible. It was large, and the finger-tips were pointed. The palms curved voluptuously, but the slender fingers closed and opened with a virile movement which suggested active and spontaneous impulses. In taking her hand and caressing it, he knew he was prejudicing his chances of escape, and fearing the hand he held in his might never let him go again, he said—
"If your destiny should be to play the viola da gamba in Dulwich, and mine to set forth again on my trip round the world."
In an instant, in a rapid succession of scenes, the horrible winter she had spent in Dulwich passed before her eyes. She saw herself stopping at the corner of a street, and looking at a certain tree and the slope of a certain house, and asking herself if her life would go on for ever, if there would be no change. She saw herself star-gazing, with daffodils for offerings in her hands; and the memory of the hungry hours when she waited for her father to come home to dinner was so vivid, that she thought she felt the same wearying pain and the exhausting yearning behind her eyes, and that feeling as if she wanted to go mad. No; she could not endure it again, and she cried plaintively, falling slightly forward—
"Owen, don't make things more difficult than they are. Why is it wrong for me to go away with you? I don't do any harm to anyone. God is merciful after all."
"If I were to marry you, you could not go on the stage; you would have to live at Riversdale and look after your children."
"But I don't want children. I want to sing."
"And I want you to sing. No one but husbands have children, exception the stage and in novels."
"It would be much more exciting to run away together, than to be married by the Vicar. It is very wicked to say these things. It is you who make me wicked."
A mist blinded her eyes, and a sickness seemed instilled in her very blood, and in a dubious faintness she was conscious of his lips. He hardly heard the words he uttered, so loud was the clatter of his thoughts, and he seemed to see the trail of his destiny unwinding itself from the distaff in the hands of Fate. He was frightened, and an impulse strove to force him to his feet, and hence, with a rapid good-bye, to the door. But instead, he leaned forth his hands, he sought her, but she shrank away, and turning her face from him, she said—
"Owen, you must not kiss me."
Again he might choose between sailing theMedusain search of adventure, or crossing the Channel in the mail packet in search of art.
"Will you come away with me?" he said. His heart sank, and he thought of the Rubicon.
"You don't mean this very instant? I could not go away without seeing father."
"Why not? You don't intend to tell him you are going away with me?"
"No; it is not the sort of thing one generally tells one's father, but—I cannot go away with you now—"
"When will you come?"
"Owen, don't press me for an answer. I don't know."
"The way of escape is still open to me," he thought; but he could not resist the temptation that this girl's face and voice presented to his imagination.