And when Merat called her in the morning, she was dreaming of love. She turned over, and, closing her eyes, strove to continue her dream, but it fled like moonshine from her memory, and was soon so far distant that she could not even perceive the subject of it. And she awoke in spite of herself, and sat up in bed sipping her chocolate; and then lay back upon the pillow with Ulick for the inner circle of her thought. It seemed that she could think of him for hours; the romance of his personality carried her on and on. At one moment she dwelt on the gold glow in his dark eyes, the paint-like blackness of his hair, and his long thin hands. At another her fancy liked to evoke his superstitions. For him the past, present and future were not twain, but one thing. And every time she saw him, she was more and more interested. Every time she discovered something new in him—he did not exist on the surface of things, but deep in himself; and she wondered if she would ever know him.
Her thoughts paused a moment, and then she remembered something he had said. It had struck her at the time, but now it appeared to her more than ever interesting. Catholicism, he had said, had not fallen from him—he had merely learnt that it was only part of the truth; he had gone further, he had raised himself to a higher spirituality. It was not that he wanted less, but more than Catholicism could give him. In religion, as in art, there were higher and lower states. We began by admiring "Faust," and went on to Wagner, hence to Beethoven and Palestrina. Catholicism was the spiritual fare of the multitude; there was a closer communion with the divine essence. She had forgotten what came next.... He held that we are always warned of our destiny and it had been proved that in the hypnotic sleep, when the pulse of life was weakest, almost at pause, there was a heightening of the powers of vision and hearing. A patient whose eyes had been covered with layers of cotton wool had been able to read the newspaper. Another patient had been able to tell what was passing in another mind, and at a distance of a mile. The only explanation that Charcot could give of this second experiment was that the knowledge had been conveyed through the rustling of the blood in the veins, which the hypnotic sleep had enabled the patient to hear. And Ulick submitted that this scientific explanation was more incredible than any spiritual one. There was much else. There was all Ulick's wonderful talk about the creation of things by thought, and his references to the mysterious Kabbala had strangely interested her. But suddenly she remembered that perchance his spiritualism was allied to the black art of the necromancers; and her Catholic conscience was mysteriously affrighted, and she experienced the attraction of terror. Was it possible that he believed that all the accidents, or what we suppose are accidents, have been earned in a preceding life? Did he really believe that lovers may tempt each other life after life, that a group of people may come together again?
"Mademoiselle, it is half-past ten."
"Very well, Merat, I will get up. I will ring for you when I have had my bath."
"Lady Duckle has gone out, and will not be home for lunch."
There was not even a letter, and the day stretched out before her. Ulick might call, but she did not think he would. She thought of a visit to her father, but something held her back, and Dulwich was a long way. After breakfast she went to the piano and sang some of Ulick's music; stopping suddenly in the middle of a bar, she thought she would send him a note asking him to come to lunch. But what should she do till two o'clock? it was now only eleven. Suddenly it struck her that she might take a hansom and go and see him. She had never seen his rooms, and to visit him there would be more amusing than for him to come to Park Lane; and she imagined his surprise and delight at seeing her. Her thoughts went to the frock she would wear—a new one had come home yesterday—this would be an excellent opportunity to wear it. She would take him to lunch with her at some restaurant! She was in excellent humour. Her thoughts amused her, and she reflected that she had done well to choose the pale shot silk with green shades in it. It was trimmed with black lace, and she selected a large black hat with black ostrich feathers to wear with it.
And seeing the people in the streets as she drove past, she wondered if they were as happy as she was. She speculated on their errands, and wondered if many of the women were going, like her, to their lovers. She wondered what their lovers were like, and she laughed at her thoughts. Seeing that she was passing through a very mean street, she hoped that Ulick's rooms were not too Bohemian, and felt relieved when she found that the street she dreaded led into a square. A square, she reflected, always means a certain measure of respectability. And the faded, old-fashioned neighbourhood pleased her. Some of the houses seemed as if they had known more fashionable days; and the square exhaled a tender melancholy; it suggested a vision of dreamy lives—lives lived in ideas, lives of students who lived in books unaware of the externality of things.
But the cabman could not find the number, and Evelyn impatiently inquired it from the vagrant children. There were groups of them on the wide doorstep, and Evelyn imagined the interior of the house, wide passages, gently-sloping staircase, its heavy banisters. It surprised and amused her to find that she had imagined it quite correctly; and when she reached the landing to which she had been directed, she stopped, hearing his voice. He was only talking to himself; she pushed the door and called to him.
"Oh, it is you?" he said; "you have come sooner than I expected."
"Then you expected me, Ulick?"
"Yes, I expected you."
"Expected me ...to-day! But, Ulick, what were you saying when I came in?"
"Only some Kabbalistic formula," he replied, quite naturally.
"But you don't really believe in such superstitions, and it surely is very wrong."
He looked at her incredulously, as he might at some beautiful apparition likely at any moment to vanish from his sight, then reverentially drew her towards him and kissed her. Her hand was laid on his shoulder, and in a delicious apprehension she stood looking at him.
"Where shall we sit?"
He threw some books and papers from a long cane chair, and she lay down in it. He sat on the arm, and then tried to talk.
"Let me take your hat."
She unpinned it, and he placed it on the piano.
His room was lighted by two square windows looking on the open space in front of the square, where the vagrant children gathered in noisy groups round a dripping iron fountain. The floor was covered with grey-green drugget, and near the fireplace, drawn in front of the window, was a large oak table covered with papers of various kinds. Against the end wall there was a bookcase, and there were shelves filled with books. There were two arm-chairs, a piano, and some prints of Blake's illustrations to Dante on the wall. The writing table, covered with manuscript music, roused Evelyn's curiosity. She glanced down a page of orchestration, and then picked up the first pages of an article, and having read them she said—
"How severe you are in your articles. You are gentler in your music, more like yourself; but I see your servant does not waste her time dusting your books ...and that is your bedroom, may I see it?"
He looked at her abashed. "I am afraid my room will seem to you very unluxurious. I have read of prima donnas' bed-rooms."
But the bare simplicity of the room did not displease her; it seemed to her more natural to sleep in a low, narrow bed like his, than in fine linen and eiderdown quilts, and she liked the scant, bleak furniture, the two chairs, the iron wash-hand stand, and the window curtained with a bit of Indian muslin. They stood talking, hardly knowing what they were saying. Her eyes embarrassed him, and she stopped in the middle of a sentence.
"Now, Ulick," she said, turning towards the door, "I want you to take me to lunch. We'll go to the Savoy."
He had to admit he had not sufficient money. Three shillings and sixpence were what remained until he received the cheque from one of his newspapers.
"But I am not going to have you pay for my lunch, Ulick. I am asking you. Be nice, don't refuse; what does it matter? What does money matter to me? It comes in so fast that I don't know what to do with it."
It was at the end of the season, and there were not many people in the low-ceilinged dining-room. All the waiters knew Evelyn, and she was conducted ceremoniously to a table. And as she passed up the room, she wondered what was being thought of Ulick. He was so different from the exquisite, foppish elegance of the man she was usually seen with. He was strange-looking, but Ulick was as distinguished as Owen, only the distinction was of another kind.
He always remembered how at the end of lunch she took out her gold knitted purse, and emptied its contents on the tablecloth. And he was astonished at the casualness with which she spent money in every shop that caught her fancy. The afternoon included a visit to the saddler's, where she had to make inquiries about bits and bridles. She called at two jewellers, where she had left things to be mended. She ordered a dozen pair of boots, and purchased a large quantity of stationery after a long discussion about dies, stamps and monograms. And when all this was finished, she proposed they should have tea in Kensington Gardens.
Ulick knew very little of London. He knew Victoria Station, for he took the train there to Dulwich; the Strand, for he went there to see editors; and Bloomsbury, because he lived there. But he had never been to the park, and seemed puzzled when Evelyn spoke of the Serpentine and the round pond. It was surprising, he said, to find forest groves in the heart of London. They had tea at a little table set beneath huge branches, and after tea they sat on a sloping lawn facing the long water. She wondered if he were aware of the beauty of things, the wonder of life, the blue of the sky, the romance of the clouds. But she was bent on hearing of the invisible world apparently always so visible to him, and she tried to win his thoughts away from the park, and to lead him to speak of his visions. She did not know if she believed in them, but she pined for exaltation, for, an unloosening of the materialistic terror in which Owen had tied her, and in this mood Ulick's dreams floated up in her life, like clouds in a cloudless sky. He sat talking, lost in his dreams, and she sat listening like one enchanted. Now their talk had strayed from the descriptions of visions beheld by folk who lived in back parlours in Bloomsbury squares to the philosophy of his own belief; and she smiled for delight at seeing the Druid in him. The ancient faiths had survived in him, and it seemed natural and even right that he should believe that after death men pass to the great plain of the land over the sea, the land of the children of Dana. Men lived there, he said, for a while, enjoying all their desires, and at the end of this period they are born again. Man lives between two desires—his desire of spiritual peace and happiness, and his desire of earthly experience.
"Oh, how true that is!"
"Man's desire of earthly experience," Ulick continued, "draws him to re-birth, and he is born into a form that fits his nature as a glove fits a hand; the soul of a warrior passes into the robust form of a warrior; the soul of a poet into the most sensitive body of a poet; so you see how modern science has only robbed the myths of their beauty."
He spoke of the old Irish legend of Mongan and the Bard, and Evelyn begged of him to tell it her.
"Mongan," he said, "had been Fin MacCool two hundred years before. When he was Fin he had been present at the death of a certain king. The bard was singing before Mongan, and mis-stated the place of the king's death. Mongan corrected him, and the Bard was so incensed at the correction that he threatened to satirise the kingdom so that it should become barren. And he would only agree to withhold his terrible satire if Mongan would give him his wife.
"Mrs. Mongan?"
"Yes, just so," Ulick replied, laughing. "Mongan asked for three days' delay to consider the dreadful dilemma in which the Bard's threat had placed him. And during that time Mongan sat with his wife consoling her, saying, "A man will come to us, his feet are already upon the western sea." And at the time when the Bard stood up to claim the wife, a strange warrior came into the encampment, holding a barbless spear. He said that he was Caolte, one of Fin's famous warriors, that the king whose place of death was in dispute was killed where Mongan had said, that if they dug down into the earth they would find the spear-head, that it would fit the shaft he held in his hand, that it was the spear-head that had killed the king."
"Go on, and tell me some more stories. I love to listen to you—you are better than any play."
And she wondered if he were indeed an ancient Druid come to life again, and that the instinct of the ancient rites lingered in him. However this might be, he could answer all her questions, and she was much interested when at the end of another tale he told her of Blake's visions and prophetic books. She knew little about Blake, and listened to Ulick's account of his visions and prophecies. Evelyn thought of Owen, and to escape from the thought she spoke of a legend which Ulick had once mentioned to her.
"You did not tell it to me, only the end; the very last phrase is all I know of it, 'and the further adventures of Bran are unknown.'"
"Bran, the son of Feval, is the story of a man who went to the great plain, the land over the sea, the land of the children of Dana. He was sitting in his court when a beautiful woman appeared, and she told him to man his ship and sail to the land of the Gods, the land where no one dies, where blossoms fall for ever.... I have forgotten the song, what a wonderful song it is. Ah, I remember, 'Where music is not born, but continually is there, where' ... no, I can't remember it. Bran sails away, and after sailing for some days he meets a man driving a chariot over the waves. This man says, 'To my eyes you are sailing over the tops of a forest,' and in many other ways makes clear to him that all things are but appearances, and change with the eye that sees them."
"How true that is. At Lady Ascott's ball I was enjoying myself, delighted with the brilliancy of the dresses, the jewellery and the flowers, and in a moment they all passed away; I only saw a little triviality and heard a voice crying within me, 'Why are you here, why are you doing these things? This ball means nothing to you.'"
"That was the voice of your destiny; your life is no longer with Owen."
"With whom is it, Ulick? Tell me, you can see into the future."
"I know no more than I told you last night. I am your destiny for to-day."
They looked at each other in fear and sadness—and though both knew the truth, neither could speak it.
"Then what happens to Bran, the son of Feval?"
"Bran visits many islands of many delights, but wishing to see his native land once more, he sails away, but the people of those islands have told him that he must not set foot on any earthly shore, or he will perish. So he sails close to his native land, but does not leave the ship. The inhabitants ask him who he is; he tells them, and they reply, 'The voyage of Bran, son of Feval, is among our most ancient stories.' One man swims ashore, and the moment his foot touches earth he becomes a heap of dust. Bran sails away, and the story ends with a phrase which you already know—'The further adventures of Bran are unknown.'"
"How true! how true! the stories of our lives are known up to a certain point, and our further adventures are unknown."
They were glad of a little silence, and Evelyn sat striving to read her own destiny in the legend. Bran visited many islands of many delights, but when he wished to return to his native land he was told that he must do no more than to sail along its coast, that if he set foot on any earthly shore he would perish. But what did this story mean, what meaning had it for her? She had visited many islands of many delights, and had come home again! What meaning had this story for her? why had she remembered the last phrase? why had she been impelled to ask Ulick to tell her this story? She looked at him—he sat with his eyes on the ground absorbed in thought, but she did not think he was thinking of the legend, but of how soon he would lose her, and she shuddered in the warm summer evening as from a sudden chill. It was now nearly seven o'clock—she would soon have to go home to dress for dinner. They were dining out, she and Lady Duckle, and she would meet once more Lady Ascott, Lady Summersdean, those people whose lives she had begun to feel had no further concern for her.
The hour was inexpressibly calm and alluring; the blue pallor of the sky and the fading of the sunset behind the tall Bayswater houses raised the soul with a tingling sense of exalted happiness and delicious melancholy? She did not ask herself if she loved Ulick better than Owen; she only knew that she must act as she was acting—that the moment had not come when she would escape from herself. They walked by the water's edge, their souls still like the water, and like it, full of calm reflections. They were aware of the evening's sad serenity, and the little struggling passions of their lives. Very often Nature seemed on the very point of whispering her secret, but it escaped her ears like an echo in the far distance, like a phantom that disappears in the mist.
"Will you come and see me to-morrow?" he asked suddenly.
"We had better not see each other every day," she said; "still, I don't see there would be any harm if you came to see me in the afternoon."
Her conscience drowsed like this heavy, somnolent evening, and a red moon rose behind the tall trees.
"The time will come," he said, "when you will hate me, Evelyn."
"I don't think I shall be as unjust as that. Good-bye, dear, the afternoon has passed very pleasantly."
Owen had telegraphed to her and she had come at once. But how callous and unsympathetic she was. If people knew what she was, no one would speak to her. If Owen knew that she had desired his mother's death ... But had she? She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died before she, Evelyn, arrived at Riversdale. As the carriage drove through the woods she noticed that they were empty and silent, save for the screech of one incessant bird, and she thought of the dead woman's face, and contrasted it with the summer time.
The house stood on the side of some rising ground in the midst of the green park. Cattle were grazing dreamily in the grass, which grew rich and long about a string of ponds, and she could see Owen walking under the colonnade. As the carriage came round the gravel space, his eyes sought her in the brougham, and she knew the wild and perplexed look on his face.
"No, don't let's go into the house unless you're tired," he said, and they walked down the drive under the branches, making, they knew not why, for the open park. "This is terrible, isn't it? And this beautiful summer's day too, not a cloud in the sky, not a wind in all the air. How peaceful the cattle are in the meadow, and the swans in the pond. But we are unhappy. Why is this? You say that it is the will of God. That is no answer. But you think it is?"
Fearing to irritate him, she did not speak, but he would not be put off, and she said—
"Do not let us argue, Owen, dear. Tell me about it. It was quite unexpected?"
"She had been in ill-health, as you know, for some time. Let us go this way."
He led her through the shrubbery and through the wicket into the meadows which lay under the terrace, and, thinking of the dead woman, she wondered at the strange, somnolent life of the cattle in the meadows and the swans on the pond. The willows, as if exhausted by the heat, seemed to bend under the stream, and their eyes followed the lines of the woods and looked into the burning blue of the sky, striving to read the secret there. A rim of moist earth under their feet, and above their heads the infinite blue! The stillness of the summer was in every blade of grass, in every leaf, and the pond reflected the sky and willows in hard, immovable reflections. An occasional ripple of the water-fowl in the reeds impressed upon them the mystery of Nature's indifference to human suffering.
"In that house behind that colonnade she lies dead. Good God! isn't it awful! We shall never see her. But you think we shall?"
"Owen, dear, let as avoid all discussion. She was a good woman. She was very good to me."
"I haven't told you that it was by her wish that I sent for you. She wanted to ask you to promise to marry me.... I told her that I had asked you, and that in a way we were engaged. I could not say more. You seemed unsettled, you seemed to wish to get out of your promise—is not that so?"
Evelyn thought of the scene by Lady Asher's bedside that an accident had saved her from. Marriage was more than ever impossible. What should she have said if Lady Asher had not died before she arrived? The dying woman's eyes, the dying woman's voice! Good heavens! what would she have said? But she had considered nothing. After glancing at the telegram, she had told Merat to pack a few clothes, and had rushed away. She pondered the various excuses she might have sent. She might have said she was not in when the telegram came, she had only just caught the train as it was; if she had not got the telegram before eleven o'clock she would have been safe. But all that was past now, Lady Asher had died before she arrived. It were better that she had died—anything were better rather than that scene should have taken place; for she could not have promised to marry Owen. What would she have done? Refused while looking into her dying eyes, or run out of the room?
"You don't answer me, Evelyn."
"Owen, don't press me. Enough has been said on that subject. This is no time to discuss such questions."
"But it is Evelyn—it was her dearest wish.... Is it then impossible? Have you entirely ceased to care?"
"No, Owen, I'm very fond of you. But you don't really want to marry me, it is because your mother wished it."
His face changed expression, and she knew that he was not certain on the point himself.
"Yes, Evelyn, I do, indeed I do;" and convinced for the moment that what he said was true, he took her hands, and looking at her he added, "It was her wish, and if what you believe be true, she is listening now from behind that blue sky."
Both were trembling, and while the swans floated by, they considered the depth of blue contained in the sky. He was taken with a little dread, and was surprised to find in himself a vague, haunting belief in the possibility of an after life. Suddenly his self-consciousness fell from him, was merged in his instinct of the woman.
"Evelyn, if I don't marry you I shall lose you. I cannot lose you, that would be to lose everything. I don't ask any questions, whether you like Ulick Dean, nor even what your relations are. I only want to know if you will marry me."
He read in her eyes that the tale of their love was ended, and heard his future life ring hollow. It seemed strange that at such a moment the serene swans should float about them, that the water-fowl should move in and out of the reeds, and that the green park and the cloudless sky were like painted paper.
"Then everything is over, everything I had to live for, all is a blank. But when you sent me away before, you had to take me back; you're not a woman who can live without a lover."
"It is difficult, I know."
"What has come between us, tell me? This fellow Ulick Dean or religious scruples?"
"I have no right to talk about religious scruples."
"Then it is this man. You love him, you've ceased to care for me, and you ask me to barter my right to kiss you, to take you in my arms, so that I may remain your friend." "Why, Evelyn, have you got tired of me?"
"But I have not got tired of you, Owen. I am very fond of you."
"Yes, but you don't care any more for me to make love to you."
"Of course it is not the same as it was in the beginning, but there is affection."
"When passion is dead, all is dead, the rest is nothing."
It seemed so shameful that he should suffer like this, and she strove to rouse herself out of her stony determination. She was like one upon a rampart; she could see the surrounding country, but could not escape to it; this rampart was the instinct, in which Nature had shut her soul. But she could not bear to see him cry.
"Oh, Evelyn, this cannot be."
Then, feeling that the reality was too brutal, she yielded to the temptation to disguise the truth.
"I don't know what I shall do, Owen; there would be no use making promises."
"Then you do love me a little, Evelyn?"
"Yes, Owen, you must never doubt that. I shall always be fond of you; remember that, whatever happens."
"Yes, I know, as a friend. Look round! the earth and the sky are quiet, and one day we shall be quiet too, only that is sure."
As they walked towards the house, their self-consciousness rose to so high a pitch that the park and house seemed to them like a thin illusion, a sort of painted paper reality, which might fall to pieces at any moment. He thought how little were the hours between the present moment and the moment when she would be taken from him. Whereas she was thinking that these hours would never pass. She realised the long hours before the sunlight waned. She thought of their lonely dinner and their evening after it. All that while she would witness his grief for the love that had gone from her, a love which she could no more give than she could once withhold. The great green park lay before their eyes, they strayed through the woods talking of her Isolde. He had not seen the performance. He had been called away the day she played it, but his pockets were full of the articles that had been written about her. The leaves of the beech trees shimmered in the steady sunlight, and they could see the green park through the drooping branches. She often detected a sob in his voice, and once, while sitting under a cedar tree at the edge of the terrace, he had to turn aside to hide his tears, and the sadness of everything made her sick and ill.
They had tea in the west hall. Owen had ceased to complain, and she had begun to think that she could not give him up entirely.
The day had passed somehow; dinner was over. Around the green park the last light of the sunset grew narrower, and the cattle faded mysteriously into the gathering gloom. Owen held converse with himself, but with recognition of the fact that he was listened to by the second subject of his discourse, and that they themselves were his ideas, the figuration of his teaching, endowed his philosophy with a dramatic intensity.
"How you used to hang round my neck and listen with eager nervous eyes. You always had the genius of exaltation. You were wonderful; I watched you, I understood you, I appreciated you; you were a marvellous jewel I had found, and of which I was excessively proud. I hardly lived at all for myself. You were my life; my life lived in you. Every time I went to see you, every appointment was a thrill, a wonder, a mystery. But it was not until you took me back after that separation at Florence that I sank into the depths of love. Then I became like a diver in the deep sea. What I had known before were but the shallows of passion. What I felt after Florence was the translucid calm of the ocean's depth. I lived in the light of an inner consciousness, seeing you always, your face always before me, and my whole being held in a rapt devotion, a self-sufficiency, an exaltation beyond the reach of words. Oh, Evelyn, I have been extraordinarily in love. But all this is nothing to you; it even bores you."
"No, Owen, no, but you don't understand."
The desire to tell him the truth came up in her throat, but the moment she sought to express it in words it became untruth, and it was to save herself from falsehood that she remained silent.
"I knew my mistake, but the temptation was irresistible. I wanted so to tell you that I loved you. I could not deny myself, effusion, tears, aspiration. I gained two very wonderful years, and so I lost you. I wonder if any lover would have the courage to forswear these joys so that he might retain his mistress? Would any mistress be worthy of the sacrifice? 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'"
"Owen, dear, you're very cruel. Why do you speak like that? I shall never cease to love you. Owen, dear, you don't hate me?" she said, turning towards him.
The silence was intense. It seemed to enter her ears and eyes like water or fire, and with dim sight and a dissolution of personal control of her body, she was moved towards him, and without any sort of thrill of desire she was drawn, almost thrown at his feet.
She accepted his kisses wearily. There was a strange look in her eyes which he could not interpret, and she could not confide her secret, and there was an inexpressible sadness in these last kisses, and Owen's heart seemed to stand still when he said,—
"Her last wish was our marriage; she would be glad if she could see us."
Evelyn hid her face on his shoulders several times. He thought she was weeping, but her eyes remained dry. He came to her room that evening, and now that they were lovers again, it seemed to him impossible that she could refuse to marry him. But she stood looking at him, absorbed, in the presence of her future life, her eyes full of a strange farewell. He could extort no words from her, and her eyes retained their strange melancholy till her departure; his last memory of her visit was their melancholy.
The forces within her were at truce. She was conscious of a suspension of hostilities. The moment was one in which she saw, as in a mirror, her poor, vague little soul in its hopeless wandering through life. She drew back, not daring to see herself, and then was drawn forward by a febrile curiosity. She felt towards them so differently that she could not think of herself as the same person when she was with Owen as she was when she was with Ulick. She remembered what she had heard the "dresser" say, and she remembered the sin. But apart from the deception she practised upon both men, there was the wrong-doing. Her conscience did not assail her now; but she knew that she would suffer to-morrow or next day. That sense of sin which she could not obliterate from her nature would rise to her lips like a salt wave, and poison her life with its bitterness, and she asked herself vain questions: Why had she left her father? Why had she two lovers? Why did she rise to seek things that made her unhappy? She thought of yesterday's journey to see a dying woman, and of to-night's performance of "Tristan and Isolde." What an unhappy, maddening jingle. The bitter wave of conscience, which rose to her lips and poisoned her taste, forced from her an avowal that she would mend her life. She foresaw nothing but deception, and easily imagined that not a day would pass without lies. All her life would be a lie, and when her nature rose in vehement revolt, she looked round for means to free herself from the fetters and chains in which she had locked herself. Thinking of Owen, she vowed that it must not happen again. But what excuse would she give? Should she tell him that Ulick was her lover? That was the only way, only it seemed so brutal. Even so she would have a lover; and strictly speaking, she ought to send them both away. Very probably that is what she would do in the end.... In the meantime, she would keep them both on! Her face contracted in an expression of terror and disgust. Had her moralising, then, ended in such miserable selfishness as this?
To escape from her thoughts she looked out at the landscape, hoping it would distract her. But she could take no interest in it. Yesterday it had seemed so beautiful, but to-day it was all reversed, and the light was different. She preferred to remember it. She thought that they must be nearing the river, and she remembered how in one place it ran round a field, making a silver horse shoe in the green land, they had crossed it twice in the space of a quarter of a mile; then it followed the railway, placid, docile, reflecting the trees and sky. Then like a child it was soon taken with a new idea; it ran far away out of sight, and Evelyn thought it would never return. But it came back again, turbulent and shallow; and with woods on the steep hillside, and spanned by a beautiful stone bridge. A little later its wanderings grew still more perplexing, and she was not sure that it had not been joined in some strange way by another river. But flowing round a low-lying field, coming suddenly from behind a bend in the land, it had seemed in that place like a pond. One bank was lined with bushes, the other lay open to a view of a treeless plain divided by ditches. Three ladies had held their light boat in the deep current, and she had wondered who they were, and what was their manner of living and their desires, and though she would never know these things, the image of these ladies in their boat had fixed itself in her mind for ever.
Soon after the train began to slacken speed, and nervously she awaited her destiny.
For she was uncertain whether she would send Ulick a telegram, telling him to come to Park Lane, or whether she would drive straight to his lodgings. At the bottom of her heart she knew that when she arrived at St. Pancras she would tell the cabman, "Queen's Square, Bloomsbury." And an hour later, nervous with expectation, she sat in the cab, seeing the streets pass behind her. She was beginning to know the characteristics of the neighbourhood, and in the afternoon light they awoke her out of a trembling lethargy. She recognised the old iron gateway, the open space, the thirsty fountain and the troop of neglected children. She liked the forlorn and rusty square. She experienced a sort of sinking anguish while waiting on the doorstep, lest he might not be at home. But when the servant girl said Mr. Dean was upstairs, she liked her dirty, good-natured smile, and she loved the stairs and banisters—it was all wonderful, and she could hardly believe that in a few moments more she would catch the first sight of his face. She would have to tell some part of the truth; and since Lady Asher was dead, he could not fail to believe. He would never think of asking her—she put the ugly thought aside, and ran up the second flight.
In the pauses of their love-making, they often wandered round the walls participating in the mystery of the Wanderers, and the sempiternal loveliness of figures who stood with raised arms, by the streams of Paradise. It seemed a profanation to turn from these aspirations to the enjoyment of material love, and Evelyn looked at Ulick questioningly. But he said that life only became wrong when it ceased to aspire. In an Indian temple, it had once been asked who was the most holy man of all. A young saint who had not eaten for ten days had been pointed out, but he said that the holiest man who ever lived stood yonder. It was then noticed that the man pointed to was drunk ... Ulick explained that the drunkenness did not matter; it was an unimportant detail in the man's life, for none aspired as he did; and laughing at the story, they stood by the dusty, windy pane, her hand resting on his shoulder, and they always remembered that that day they had seen the foliage in the square.
Lady Duckle had gone to Homburg; Owen had been obliged to go to Bath on account of his gout; and Evelyn was free to abandon herself to her love of Ulick and to her love of her father, and she begged him not to spoil her happiness, but to come to Dulwich with her. His scruples were easily argued away. She urged that he had not taken her away, he had brought her back to her father. This last argument was convincing, and the happiest time in their lives was the week they spent in Dulwich. They sat down together to dinner under the lamp at the round table in the little back room, and their evenings were passed at the harpsichord and the clavichord; and amid the dreams and aspirations of great men they attained their sublime nature. The music that had been given and that was to be given at St. Joseph's furnished a never-failing subject of discussion, and Mr. Innes told them stories of Italy in the sixteenth century. How almost every Sunday there was a festival in some church where the most beautiful music was heard. Along the nave were eight choirs, four on one side and four on the other, raised on stages eight to ten feet high, and facing one another at equal distances. Each choir had a portable organ, and themaître composateurbeat the time for the principal choir. And Mr. Innes's eyes lighted up when he spoke of the admirablestyle recitatifin the oratory of St. Marcellus when there was a congregation of the Brothers of the Holy Crucifix. This order was composed of the chief noblemen of Rome, who had therefore the power of bringing together the rarest musicians Italy could produce. The voices began with a psalm in motet form, and then the instruments played a symphony, after which the voices sang a story from the Old Testament. Each chorister represented a personage in the story, etc. He spoke of the great organist at St. Peter's, and the wonderful inventions he is said to have displayed in his improvisations. No one since had played the harp like the renowned Horatio, but there was no one who could play the lyre like the renowned Ferrabosco in England. Evelyn leaned across the table, transported three centuries back, hearing all this music, which she had known from her earliest years, performed by virtue of her father's description in Italy, in St. Peter's, in the oratory of St. Marcellus and in the church of Minerva. Sometimes her father and Ulick began an argument, her sympathies alternated between them; she spoke very little, preferring to listen, not liking to side with either, agreeing with them, sometimes angering her father by her neutrality. But one evening he was a little too insistent, and Evelyn burst into tears, and ran upstairs to her room. The two men looked at each other, and Mr. Innes begged Ulick to tell him if he had been unkind, and then besought him to go upstairs and try to induce Evelyn to come down. Her face brightened into merry laughter at her own folly, and it called from her many entertaining remarks, so Ulick was tempted to set them one against the other, and to do so he had only to ask if Evelyn could sing such light soprano parts as Zerlina or Rosetta as well as her mother.
In the mornings Evelyn and Ulick lingered in the shade of the chestnut trees or loitered in the lanes. At one moment they were telling each other of the fatality of their passion; in the next, by some transition of which they were not aware, they found themselves discussing some musical question. They went for long drives; and Richmond Park, not more than eight or ten miles distant, was at this season a beautiful, plaintive languor. There was a strange stillness in the air and a tender bloom upon the blue sky which spoke to the heart as no words, as only music could. The shadows moved listlessly among the bracken, and every vista was an enticement. Soft rain had allayed the dust of the road, and the distant hillsides seemed in the morning mists extraordinarily blue and romantic. There were wide prospects suggesting some great domain, and about the large oaks which stood in these open spaces herds of deer browsed, themselves the colour of the approaching month. About a sudden hillside, brilliantly blue, the evanescent mist hung over the heavy fronds, going out in the sunlight that was breaking through a grey sky. Ulick exclaimed, "How beautiful," and at the same moment Evelyn said, "Look at the deer, they are going to jump the railings." But the deer ran underneath, and galloped down the sloping park between a line of massive oaks; and the white and the tan hinds and fawns expressed in their life and beauty something which thrilled in the heart, and perforce Evelyn and Ulick remained silent. The park was wreathed that morning in sunlight and mist, it seemed to invite confidences, and the lovers dreamed of a perfect union of soul. The carriage was told to wait for them, and they took a path leading under a long line of trees toward high ground. Carts had passed there, and the ruts were full of water, but the earth about them was a little crisp, as if there had been frost during the night. They had brought with them a score of "Parsifal," for it was not yet certain that Evelyn would not play the part of Kundry. Notwithstanding Ulick's criticism, she thought she would like to act in the third act. But they were too interested in each other to open the score, and they were excited by the wonder of Nature in the still morning. The sky was all silver, and a very little distance bathed the hillsides in beautiful blue tones. The leaves of the oak trees hung languidly, as if considering the lowly earth to which they must soon return. Yet the blood was hot and the nerves were highly strung, and life seemed capable of great things in this moody, contemplative morning. There was a wonder in the little wren that picked her way among the fronds, and a thrill in the scurry of the watchful rabbit; and when they reached the crest of the upland and saw an open expanse of park, with the deer moving away through the mist, their souls dilated, and in happy ecstasy they looked upon Nature with the same innocent wonderment as the first man and woman.
The morning seemed to inspire adventure, and the little tale that Evelyn was telling was just what was required to enhance its suggestion. By some accident in the conversation she had been led to speak of how she had been nearly captured by pirates in the Mediterranean. They were becalmed off the African coast, and a boat had rowed out with fruits and vegetables. The suspicious countenances of this boat's crew did not strike them at the time. But they were a reconnoitring party, and next day about four in the afternoon they noticed a vessel propelled by sails and oars steering straight for them, as if in the intention of running them down. It paid no attention to the cries of the captain, but came straight at them, and would have succeeded in its design if the yacht had not been going through the water faster than the pirates supposed, so they fell astern, and no one thought any more of them till they tacked, and they had almost overtaken the yacht, they were hardly distant more than fifty yards, when their intention was suspected. The captain put theMedusa'shead up to the wind, and she soon began to leave her pursuer behind.
"We had no arms on board, they were fifty to twenty; the men would have been massacred, and I should have finished my days in a harem."
Ulick had brought his violin with him, and they walked under the drooping boughs, she singing and he playing old-world melodies by Lulli and Rameau. Sometimes a passer-by stopped, and peering through, discovered them in a hollow sitting under an oak. A snake crawled out of its hole, and Ulick was about to rush forward to kill it, but Evelyn laid her hand upon his, and said—
"Let it listen, poor thing. No living thing should meet its death for its love of music."
"You're no longer the Evelyn Innes that loved Owen Asher."
"I think I have changed a great deal. I was very young when I knew him first."
She spoke of the influence he had exercised over her, but now his ideas meant as little as he did himself—it was all far away. Only a little trick of speech and a turn of phrase remained to recall his passage through her life. When they returned home she found a letter from him on the table, and her face clouded as she read his letter, for it announced an intention to call when he came to town, and to avoid his visit she thought she would stop in Dulwich. But if she stayed over Saturday, she would have to go to Mass on Sunday. Last Sunday she escaped by pleading indisposition. She wondered which she would prefer, to face Owen or to brave the effect that she knew Mass would produce upon her.
She was in the music-room, looking through the first act of "Grania," and thinking that perhaps after all she might remain on the stage and create the part. Her father had gone to St. Joseph's for choir practice, Ulick had gone to London for strings for her viola da gamba; and all the morning she had been uneasy and expectant. The feeling never quite left her that something was about to happen, that she was to meet someone—someone for whom she had been waiting a long while. So she started on hearing the front door bell ring. She could think of no one whom it might be unless Owen. If it were, what would she say? And she waited, eager for the servant to announce the visitor. It was Monsignor Mostyn.
She was dressed in a muslin tea-gown over shot green silk, and was conscious of her triviality as she stood before the tall, spare ecclesiastic. She admired the calm, refined beauty of his face, the bright, dark eyes and the thin features, steadfast and aloof as some saints she had seen in pictures.
"I called to see your father, Miss Innes, but he is not in, and hearing that you were, I asked to see you. For my business is really with you, that is, if you can spare the time?"
"Won't you sit down, Monsignor?"
"I have come, Miss Innes, to remind you of a promise that you once made me."
The colour returned to her cheeks, and a smile to her lips. But she did not remember, and was slightly embarrassed.
"Did I make you a promise?"
"Have you forgotten my speaking to you about some poor sisters who might be driven from their convent if they failed to pay the interest on a mortgage?"
"Ah, yes, on the night of the concert."
"They have paid the interest and kept a roof over their heads, but in doing so they have exhausted their resources; and not to put too fine a point upon it, I am afraid they often have not enough to eat. Something must be done for them. I thought that a concert would be the quickest way of getting them some money."
"You want me to sing?"
"It really would be a charitable action."
"I shall be delighted to sing for them. Where is this convent?"
"At Wimbledon."
"My old convent! The Passionist Sisters!"
"Your old convent?"
"Yes," Evelyn replied, the colour rising slightly to her cheeks. "I made a retreat there, long ago, before I went on the stage."
She was grieved to hear that the Reverend Mother she had known was dead; she had died two years ago, and Mother Margaret was dead too. Monsignor could tell her nothing about Sister Bonaventure. Mother Philippa was the sub-prioress; and in the midst of her questions he explained how the financial difficulties had arisen. They were, he said, the result of the imprudences of the late Reverend Mother, one of the best and holiest of women, but unfortunately not endowed with sufficient business foresight. He was quite prepared to admit that the little wooden chapel which had preceded the present chapel was inadequate, and that she was justified in building another, but not in expending nearly one thousand pounds in stained glass. The new chapel had cost ten thousand pounds, and the interest of this money had to be paid. There were other debts—
"But there is no reason why I should weary you with an exact statement."
"But you do not weary me, Monsignor; I am, on the contrary, deeply interested."
"The convent owes a great deal to the late Reverend Mother, and the last thing I wish to express is disapproval. We do not know the circumstances, and must not judge her; we know that she acted for the best. No doubt she is now praying to God to secure the safety of her convent."
Evelyn sat watching him, fascinated by the clear, peremptory, ecclesiastical dignity which he represented. If he had a singing voice, she said to herself, it would be a tenor. He had allowed the conversation to wander from the convent to the concert; and they were soon talking of their musical preferences. There was an impersonal tenderness, a spiritual solicitude in his voice which enchained her; no single idea held her, but wave after wave of sensation passed, transforming and dissolving, changeable as a cloud. Human life demands hope, and the priest is a symbol of hope; there is always a moment when the religionist doubts, and there is also a moment when the atheist says, "Who knows, perhaps." And this man had done what she had not been able to do: he had put aside the paltry pleasures of the world, he placed his faith in things beyond the world, pleasures which perchance were not paltry. An entirely sensual life was a terrible oppression; hers often weighed upon her like a nightmare; to be happy one must have an ideal and strive to live up to it. Her mind flickered and sank, changing rapidly as an evening sky, never coming to anything distinct enough to be called a thought. She desired to hear him speak, she felt that she must speak to him about religion; she wanted to know if he were sure, and how he had arrived at his certitudes.... She wanted to talk to him about life, death and immortality. She had tried to lead the conversation into a religious discussion, but he seemed to avoid it, and just as she was about to put a definite question, Ulick came into the room. He stood crushing his grey felt hat between his hands, a somewhat curious figure, and she watched him talking to Monsignor, thinking of the difference of vision. As Ulick said, everything was in that. Men were divided by the difference of their visions. She was curious to know how the dogmatic and ritualistic vision of Monsignor affected Ulick, and when the prelate left she asked him.
He was as ingenuous and unexpected on this subject as he was on all subjects. If the antique priest, he said, clothed himself in purple, it was to produce an exaltation in himself which would bring him closer to the idea, which would render him, as it were, accessible to it. But the vestments of the modern priest had lost their original meaning, they were mere parade. This explanation was very like Ulick; she smiled, and was interested, but her interest was passing and superficial. The advent of the priest had moved her in the depths of her being, and her mind was thick with lees of ancient sentiment, and wrecks of belief had floated up and hung in mid memory. She knew that the beauty of the ritual, the eternal psalms, the divine sacrifice, the very ring of the bell, the antiquity of the language, lifted her out of herself, and into a higher, a more intense ecstasy than the low medium of this world's desires. And if she did not believe that the bread and wine were the true body and blood of God, she still believed in the real Presence. She was aware of it as she might be of the presence of someone in the room, though he might be hidden from her eyes. Though the bread and wine might not be the body and blood of Christ, still the act of consecration did seem to her to call down the spirit of God, and it had seemed to her to inhabit the church at the moment of consecration. It might not be true to Owen, nor yet to Ulick, but it was true to her—it was a difference of vision.... She sat buried in herself. Then she walked to the window confused and absorbed, with something of the dread of a woman who finds herself suddenly with child. When Ulick came to her she did not notice him, and when he asked her to do some music with him she refused, and when he put his arms about her she drew away sullenly, almost resentfully.
A few days after she was in Park Lane. She had gone there to pay some bills, and she was going through them when she was startled by the front door bell. It was a visitor without doubt. Her thoughts leaped to Monsignor, and her face lighted up. But he did not know she was at Park Lane; he would not go there.... It was Owen come up from Bath. What should she say to him? Good heavens! It was too late to say she was not at home. He was already on the stairs. And when he entered he divined that he was not welcome. They sat opposite each other, trying to talk. Suddenly he besought her not to throw him over.... She had to refuse to kiss him, and that was convincing, he said. Once a woman was not greedy for kisses, the end was near. And his questions were to the point, and irritatingly categorical. Had she ever been unfaithful to him? Did she love Ulick Dean? Not content with a simple denial, he took her by both hands, and looking her straight in the face, asked her to give him her word of honour that Ulick Dean was not her lover, that she had never kissed him, that she had never even desired to kiss him, that no idea of love making had ever arisen between them. She pledged her word on every point, and this was the second time that herliaisonwith Ulick had obliged her to lie, deliberately in so many words. Nor did the lying even end there. He wanted her to stay, to dine with him; she had to invent excuses—more lies.
She was returning to Dulwich in her carriage, and until she arrived home her thoughts hankered and gnawed, pestered and terrified her. Never had she felt so ashamed, so disgusted with herself, and the after taste of the falsehoods she had told came back into her mouth, and her face grew dark in the beautiful summer evening. Her brows were knit, and she resolved that if the occasion happened again, she would tell Owen the truth. This was no mock determination; on this point she was quite sure of herself. Looking round she saw the mean streets of Camberwell. She saw them for a moment, and then she sank back into her reverie.
She was deceiving Owen, she was deceiving her father, she was deceiving Ulick, she was deceiving Monsignor—he would not have thought of asking her to sing at the concert if he knew what a life was hers. Nor would those good women at the convent accept her aid if they knew what kind of woman she was. And the strange thing was that she did not believe herself to be a bad woman; at the bottom of her heart she loved truth and sincerity. She wished to have an ideal and to live up to it, yet she was doing the very opposite. That was what was so strange, that was what she did not understand, that was what made her incomprehensible to herself. She sighed, and at the bottom of her heart there lay an immense weariness, a weariness of life, of the life she was leading, and she longed for a life that would coincide with her principles, and she felt that if she did not change her life, she would do something desperate. She might kill herself.
It is true that man is a moral animal, but it is not true that there is but one morality; there are a thousand, the morality of each race is different, the morality of every individual differs. The origin of each sect is the desire to affirm certain moral ideas which particularly appeal to it; every change of faith is determined by the moral temperament of the individual; we prefer this religion to that religion because our moral ideas are more implicit in these affirmations than in those.
The restriction of sexual intercourse is the moral ideal of Western Europe; it is the one point on which all Christians are agreed; it is the one point on which they all feel alike. So inherent is the idea of sexual continence in the Western hemisphere that even those whose practice does not coincide with their theory rarely impugn the wisdom of the law which they break; they prefer to plead the weakness of the flesh as their excuse, and it is with reluctance that they admit that without an appeal to conscience it would be impossible to prove that it is wrong for two unmarried people to live together. It is not perceived that the fact that no material proof can be produced strengthens rather than weakens the position of the moralist. To do unto others as you would be done unto, to love your neighbour as yourself, are practical moralities which may be derived from social necessities, but the abstract moralities, that sexual intercourse is wrong except between married people, and that it is wrong to tell a lie, even if the lie be a perfectly harmless one, exist of themselves. That we cannot bring abstract moralities into the focus of our understanding is no argument. As well deny the stars because we cannot understand them. That abstract moralities impose on us should be a sufficient argument that they cannot be the futilities that Owen would argue them to be—not them, he only protested against one.... (She had not thought of that before—Owen was no more rational than she.) That the idea of chastity should persist in spite of reason is proof of its truth. For what more valid argument in favour of a chaste life than that the instinct of chastity abides in us? After all, what we feel to be true is for us the greatest truth, if not the only real truth. Ulick was nearer the truth than Owen. He had said, "A sense which eludes all the other senses and which is not apprehensible to reason governs the world, all the rest is circumstantial, ephemeral. Were man stripped one by one of all his attributes, his intelligence, his knowledge, his industry, as each of these shunks was broken up and thrown aside, the kernel about which they had gathered would be a moral sense."
Evelyn remembered that when she had sent Owen away before, he had said, "Sexual continence at best is not the whole of morality; from your use of the word one would think that it was." But for her the sexual conscience was the entire conscience—she had no temptation to steal. There was lying, but she was never tempted to tell lies except for one reason; she could not think of herself telling a lie for any other. To her the sexual sin included all the others. She turned her head aside, for the bitterness of her conscience was unendurable, and she vowed that, whatever happened, she would speak the truth if Owen questioned her again. She could never bring herself to tell such horrible falsehoods again.
These revulsions of feeling alternated with remembrances of Owen's tenderness; fugitive sensations of him tingled in her veins, and ill-disposed her to Ulick. She spoke little, and sat with averted eyes. When he asked her if he should come to her room, she answered him peremptorily; and he heard her lock her door with a determined hand.
As she lay in bed, conscious of the inextricable tangle of her life, it was knotting so closely and rapidly that her present double life could not endure much longer, the odious taste of the lies she had told that afternoon rose again to her lips, and, as if to quench the bitterness, she vowed that she would tell Owen the truth ... if he asked her. If he did not ask her she would have to bear the burden of her lies. She tried not to wish that he might ask her. Then questions sallied from every side. She could not marry Owen without telling him about Ulick. She could not marry Ulick without telling him that she had been unfaithful to him with Owen. Should she send away Owen and marry Ulick, or would it be better to send away Ulick and marry Owen—if he would marry her after he had heard her confession? It was unendurable to have to tell lies all day long—yes, all day long—of one sort or another. She ought to send them both away.... But could she remain on the stage without a lover? Could she go to Bayreuth by herself? Could she give up the stage? And then?
She awoke in a different mood—at least, it seemed to her that her mood was different. She was not thinking of Owen, of the lies she had told him; and she could talk gaily with Ulick about the concert she had promised to sing at. She seemed inclined to take the whole responsibility of this concert upon her own shoulders. As Ulick said, it was impossible for her to take a small part in any concert.
They were driving in Richmond Park, not far from the convent. The autumn-tinted landscape, the vicissitudes of the woods, and the plaintive air brought a tender yearning into her mood, and she contrasted the lives of those poor, holy women with her own life. Ulick did not intrude himself; he sat silent by her, and she thought of Monsignor. Sometimes he was no more than a little shadow in the background of her mind; but he was never wholly absent, and that day all matters were unconsciously referred to him. She was curious to know what his opinions were of the stage; and as they returned home in the short, luminous autumn evening, she seemed to discover suddenly the fact that she was no longer as much interested in the stage as she used to be. She even thought that she would not greatly care if she never sang on the stage again. Last night she had put the thought aside as if it were madness, to-day it seemed almost natural. Thinking of the poor sisters who lived in prayer and poverty on the edge of the common, she remembered that her life was given up to the portrayal of sensual emotion on the stage. She remembered the fierce egotism of the stage—an egotism which pursued her into every corner of her life. Compared with the lives of the poor sisters who had renounced all that was base in them, her life was very base indeed. In her stage life she was an agent of the sensual passion, not only with her voice, but with her arms, her neck and hair, and every expression of her face, and it was the craving of the music that had thrown her into Ulick's arms. If it had subjugated her, how much more would it subjugate and hold within its sensual persuasion the ignorant listener—the listener who would perceive in the music nothing but its sensuality. Why had the Church not placed stage life under the ban of mortal sin? It would have done so if it knew what stage life was, and must always be. She then wondered what Monsignor thought of the stage, and from the moment her curiosity was engaged on this point it did not cease to trouble her till it brought her to the door of the presbytery. The ostensible object of her visit was to make certain proposals to Monsignor regarding the music she was to sing at the concert.
She was shown into a small room; its one window was so high up on the wall that the light was dim in the room, though outside there was brilliant sunshine. The sadness of the little room struck cold upon her, and she noticed the little space of floor covered with cocoa-nut matting, and how it grated under the feet. The furniture was a polished oak table, with six chairs to match. A pious print hung on each wall. One was St. Monica and St. Augustine, and the rapt expression of their faces reminded her that she might be bartering a divine inheritance for a coarse pleasure that left but regret in the heart. And it was in such heartsick humour that Monsignor found her. He seemed to assume that she needed his help, and the tender solicitude with which he wished to come to her aid was in itself a consolation. She was already an incipient penitent as she told him of her project to bring an orchestra at her own expense to Wimbledon, and give the forest murmurs with the Bird Song from "Siegfried." Monsignor left everything to her; he placed himself unreservedly in her hands. After a long silence she pushed a cheque for fifty pounds across the table, begging him not to mention the name of the giver. She was singing for them, that was sufficient obligation. He approved of her delicacy of feeling, thanked her for her generosity, and the business of the interview seemed ended.
"I'm so much obliged to you, Monsignor Mostyn, for having come to me, for having given me an opportunity of doing some good with my money. Hitherto, I'm ashamed to say, I've spent it all on myself. It has often seemed to me intolerably selfish, and I often felt that I must do something, only I did not know what to do."
Then, feeling that she must take him into her confidence, she asked him what proportion of our income we should devote to charity. He said it was impossible to fix a precise sum, but he knew many deserving cases, and offered to advise her in the distribution of whatever money she might decide to spend in charity. Suddenly his manner changed; he even seemed to wish her to stay, and the conversation turned back to music. The conversation was mundane as possible, and it was only now and then, by some slight allusion to the Church, that he reminded Evelyn, and perchance himself, that the essential must be distinguished from the circumstantial.
Again and again the temptation rose up, it seemed to look out from her very eyes, and she was so conscious of this irresistible desire to speak to him of herself that she no longer heard him, and hardly saw the blank wall with the pious print upon it.
"I have not told you, Monsignor," she said at last, "that I am leaving the stage."
She knew that he must ask her what had induced her to think of taking so important a step, and then she would have an opportunity of asking his opinion of the stage. Of course neither Ulick's nor Owen's name would be mentioned.
"As at present constituted, the stage is a dangerous influence. Some women no doubt are capable of resisting evil even when surrounded by evil. Even so they set a bad example, for the very knowledge of their virtue tempts others less sure of themselves to engage in the same life, and these weak ones fall. The virtuous actress is like a false light, which instead of warning vessels from the rocks entices them to their ruin."
He did not indite the Oberammergau Passion Play, but he could not accept "Parsifal." He had heard Catholics aver, while approving of the performance of "Parsifal," that they would not wish to see the piece performed out of Bayreuth. But he failed to understand this point of view altogether. It seemed to assume that a parody of the Mass was unobjectionable at Bayreuth, though not elsewhere. If there was no parody of the Mass, why should they say that they would not like to see the piece performed elsewhere? He had read the book and knew the music, and could not understand how a great work of art could contain scenes from real life. Whether these be religious ceremonies or social functions, the artistic sin is the same. He asked Evelyn why she was smiling, and she told him that it was because the only two whom she had heard disapprove of "Parsifal" were Monsignor Mostyn and Ulick Dean. It seemed strange that two such extremes should agree regarding the profligacy of "Parsifal." Monsignor was interested for a moment in Ulick Dean's views, and then he said—
"But was it with the intention of consulting me, Miss Innes, that you introduced the subject? I hear that you are going to play the principal part next year—Kundry."
"Nothing is settled. As I told you just now, Monsignor, I am thinking of leaving the stage, and your opinions concerning it do not encourage me to remain an actress."
"My dear child, you have had the good fortune to be brought up in holy Church. You have, I hope, constant recourse to the sacraments. You have confided the difficulties of your stage life to your confessor. How does he advise you?"
Raising her eyes, Evelyn said in a sinking voice—
"Even if one has doubts about the whole doctrine of the Church, it is still possible to wish to lead a good life. Don't you think so, Monsignor?"
"There are many Protestants who lead excellent lives. But I have always noticed that when a Catholic begins to question the doctrine of the Church, his or her doubts were preceded by a desire to lead an irregular life."
And in the silence Evelyn became aware of the afternoon sun shining through the window above their heads, enlivening the dark parlour. It seemed strange to sit discussing such subjects in the sunshine. The ray that fell through the window lighted up the priest's thin face till it seemed like one of the wood carvings she had seen in Germany. When he resumed the conversation it was to lead her to speak of herself and the reasons which had suggested an abandonment of her stage career. The tender, impersonal kindness of the priest drew her out of herself, and she told him how she had begun to perceive that the stage had ceased to interest her as it had once done; she spoke of vulgarity and parade, yet that was not quite what she meant; it had come to seem to her like so much waste, as if she were wasting her time in doing things that did not matter, like grown people would feel if they were asked to pass the afternoon playing with dolls. Shrugging her shoulders hysterically, she said she could not explain.
"But have you an idea of what life you wish to lead?"
"No, I don't think I have; I only know that I am not happy in my present life."
"I believe you see a good deal of Sir Owen Asher. He helped you, did he not, in your musical education?"
"Yes," she answered under her breath. "He is an intimate friend." In a moment of unexpected courage, she said, "Do you know him, Monsignor?"
"I have heard a good deal about him, and nothing, I regret to say, to his credit. He is, I believe, an avowed atheist, and does not hesitate to declare his unbelief in every society, and to make open boast of an immoral life. He has read and tried to understand a little more than the people with whom he associates. I suppose the doubts you entertain regarding the doctrine of the Church are the result of his teaching?"
With a little pathetic air, Evelyn admitted that Owen had used every possible argument to destroy her faith. She had read Huxley, Darwin, and a little Herbert Spencer.
"Herbert Spencer! Miserable collections of trivial facts, bearing upon nothing. Of what value, I ask, can it be to suffering humanity to know that such and such a fact has been observed and described? Then the general law! rubbish, ridiculous rubbish!"
"The scientists fail to see that what we feel matters much more than what we know."
"True, quite true," he said, turning sharply and looking at her with admiration. Then, recollecting himself, he said, "But God does not exist because we feel He exists. He exists not through us, but through Himself, from all time and through all eternity. To feel is better than to observe, to pray is better than to inquire, but indiscriminate abandonment to our feelings would lead us to give credence to every superstition. You have, I perceive, escaped from the rank materialism of Sir Owen's teaching, but whither are you drifting, my dear child? You must return to the Church; without the Church, we are as vessels without a rudder or compass."
He walked up and down the room as though debating with himself. Evelyn held her breath, wondering what new turn the conversation would take. Suddenly she lost her courage, and overcome with fear got up to go, and Monsignor, considering that enough had been said, did not attempt to detain her. But as he bade her good-bye at the door, his keen eye fixed upon her, he added, "Remember, I do not admit your difficulties to be intellectual ones. When you come to realise that for yourself, I shall be glad to do all in my power to help you. God bless you, my child!"
If only she could put the whole thing aside—refuse to bother her head any more, or else believe blindly what she was told. She hated wobbling, yet she did nothing else. Suddenly she felt that if she were to believe at all, it must be like Monsignor. The magnetism of his faith thrilled her, and, in a moment, it had all became real to her. But it was too late. She could never do all her religion asked. Her whole life would have to come to pieces; nothing of it would remain, and she entirely lost heart when she considered in detail the sacrifices she would have to make. She saw herself at Dulwich with her father, giving singing lessons, attending the services, and living about St. Joseph's. She saw herself singing operas in every capital, and always a new lover at her heels. Both lives were equally impossible to her. As she lay back in her carriage driving through the lazy summer streets, she almost wished she had no conscience at all. What was the use of it? She had just enough to spoil her happiness in wrong-doing, yet not enough to prevent her doing what deep down in her heart she knew to be wrong.
That evening she wrote a number of letters, and begged a subscription of every friend—Owen was out of the question and she hesitated whether she should make use of Ulick. She would have liked to have left him out of this concert altogether, and it was only because she had no one else whom she could depend upon that she consented to let him go off in search of the necessary tenor. But to take him to the concert did not seem right.