by George Moore
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you said Greek hymn at one. The time will pass quickly between eleven and one. You need not change your dress.”
Then, with an expressive little glance which went straight to his heart, she noted his fastidious dress, the mauve necktie, the perfectly fitting morning coat buttoned across the chest, the yellow-brown trousers, and the long laced boots, half of patent and half of tan coloured leather.
“I could not walk about with you in this dress and hat, but I sha’n’t keep you long.”
While he waited he congratulated himself on the moment when he had determined to abandon his tour round the world, and come back to seek Evelyn Innes at Dulwich.
“She is much nicer, a hundred times more exciting than I thought. Poetry, sympathy, it is like living in a dream.” He asked himself if he liked her better than Georgina, and answered himself that he did; but deep down in his heart he knew that the other woman had given him deeper and more poignant emotions, and he knit his brows, for he hated Georgina.
Owen was the first temptation in Evelyn’s life, and it carried her forward with the force of a swirling river. She tried to think, but thoughts failed her, and she hooked her black cloth skirt and thrust her arms into her black cloth jacket with puffed sleeves. She opened her wardrobe, and wondered which hat he would like, chose one, and hastened downstairs.
“You’ve not been long ... you look very nice. Yes, that is an improvement.”
His notice of her occasioned in her a little flutter of joy, a little exaltation of the senses, and she walked on without speaking, deep in her pleasure, and as the sensation died she became aware that she was very happy. The quiet silence of the Spring morning corresponded to her mood, and the rustle of last year’s leaves communicated a delicious emotion which seemed to sing in the currents of her blood, and a little madness danced in her brain at the ordinary sight of nature. “This way,” she said, and they turned into a lane which almost looked like country. There were hedges and fields; and the sunlight dozed amid the cows, and over the branches of the high elm the Spring was already shaking a soft green dust. There were nests in the bare boughs — whether last year’s or this year’s was not certain. Further on there was a stile, and she thought that she would like to lean upon it and look straight through the dim fields, gathering the meaning which they seemed to express. She wondered if Owen felt as she did, if he shared her admiration of the sunlight which fell about the stile through the woven branches, making round white spots on the roadway.
“So you were surprised to hear that I had given up my trip round the world?”
“I was surprised to hear you had given it up so that you might hear me sing.”
“You think a man incapable of giving up anything for a woman?”
He was trembling, and his voice was confused; experience did not alter him; on the verge of an avowal he was nervous as a schoolboy. He watched to see if she were moved, but she did not seem to be; he waited for her to contest the point he had raised, but her reply, which was quite different, took him aback.
“You say you came back to hear me sing. Was it not for another woman that you went away?”
“Yes, but how did you know?”
“The woman with the red hair who was at your party?”
The tale of a past love affair often served Owen as a plank of transition to another. He told her the tale. It seemed to him extraordinary because it had happened to him, and it seemed to Evelyn very extraordinary because it was her first experience of the ways of love.
“Then it was she who got tired of you? Why did she get tired of you?”
“Why anything? Why did she fall in love with me?”
“Is it, then, the same thing?”
He judged it necessary to dissemble, and he advanced the theory which he always made use of on these occasions — that women were more capricious than men, that so far as his experience counted for anything, he had invariably been thrown over. The object of this theory was two-fold. It impressed his listener with an idea of his fidelity, which was essential if she were a woman. It also suggested that he had inspired a large number of caprices, thereby he gratified his vanity and inspired hope in the lady that as a lover he would prove equal to her desire. It also helped to establish the moral atmosphere in which an intrigue might develop.
“Did you love her very much?”
“Yes, I was crazy about her. If I hadn’t been, should I have rushed off in my old yacht for a tour round the world?”
He felt the light of romance fall upon him, and this, he thought, was how he ought to appear to her.
Yet he was sincere. He admired Evelyn, he thought he might like to be her lover, and he regarded their present talk as a necessary subterfuge, the habitual comedy in which we live. So, when Evelyn asked him if he still loved Georgina, he answered that he hated her, which was only partly true; and when she asked him if he would go back to her if she were to invite him, he said that nothing in the world would induce him to do so, which was wholly untrue, though he would not admit it to himself. He knew that if Georgina were to hold up her little finger he would leave Evelyn without a second thought, however foolish he might know such conduct to be.
“Why did you not marry her when she was in love with you?”
“You can love a woman very well indeed without wanting to marry her; besides, she is married. But are you sure we’re going right?...Is this the way to the picture gallery?”
“Oh, the picture gallery, I had forgotten. We have passed it a long while.”
They turned and went back, and, in the silence, Owen considered if he had not been too abrupt. His dealings with women had always been conducted with the same honour that characterised his dealings on the turf, but he need not have informed her so early in their acquaintanceship of his vow of celibacy. While he thought how he might retrieve his slight indiscretion, she struggled in a little crisis of soul. Owen’s words, tone of voice, manner were explicit; she could not doubt that he hoped to induce her to leave her father, and she felt that she ought not to see him any more. She must see him, she must go out to walk with him, and her will fluttered like a feather in space. She remembered with a gasp that he was the only thing between herself and Dulwich, and at the same moment he decided that he could not do better than to suggest to her that her father was sacrificing her to his ambitions.
“I wonder,” he said, assuming a meditative air, “what will become of you? Eventually, I mean.”
“What do you think?” Her eagerness told him that he had struck the right note.
“You have grown up in an atmosphere of great music, far removed from the tendencies of our day. You have received from your father an extraordinary musical education. He has prepared you on all points but one for your career, he has not developed your voice; his ambition intervened—”
“You must not say that. Father does not allow his ambition to interfere with his duties regarding me. You only think that because you do not know him; you don’t know all the difficulties he has to contend with.”
Owen smiled inwardly, pleased at the perception he had shown in divining her feelings, and he congratulated himself on having sown some slight seed of discontent; and then, as if he were withdrawing, or at least attenuating, the suggestion he had thrown out, he said —
“Anyone can see that you and your father are very attached to each other.”
“Can they?”
“You always like to be near him, and your favourite attitude is with your hand on his shoulder.”
“So many people have noticed that. Yes, I am very fond of father. We were always very fond of each other, but now we are more like pals than father and daughter.”
He encouraged her to talk of herself, to tell him the story of her childhood, and how she and her father formed this great friendship. Evelyn’s story of her mother’s death would have interested him if he had been able to bestow sufficient attention upon it, but the intricacy of the intrigue he was ente
ring upon engrossed his thoughts. There were her love of her father, her duty towards him, and her piety to be overcome. Against these three considerable influences there were her personal ambition and her love of him. A very evenly matched game, he thought, and for nothing in the world would he have missed this love adventure.
At that moment the words, “A few days later she died,” caught on his ear. So he called all the sorrow and reverence he could into his eyes, sighed, and raised his eyebrows expressing such philosophic resignation in our mortal lot as might suffice to excuse a change in the conversation.
“That is the picture gallery,” Evelyn said, pointing to a low brick building, almost hidden at the back of a well-kept garden. The unobtrusive doorway was covered with a massive creeper, just beginning to emerge from it’s winter’s rust. “Do you care to go in?” she said negligently.
“You know the pictures so well, I am afraid they will bore you.”
“No, I should like to see them with you.”
He could see that her æsthetic taste had been absorbed by music, and that pictures meant nothing to her, but they meant a great deal to him, and, unable to resist the temptation, he said— “Let us go in for a little while, though it does seem a pity to waste this beautiful Spring day.”
There was an official who took her parasol and his cane, and they were impressed by the fact of having to write their names side by side in the book — Sir Owen Asher, Evelyn Innes.
On pushing through the swing-door, they found themselves in a small room hung with the Dutch school. There were other rooms, some four or five, opening one into the other, and lighted so that the light fell sideways on to the pictures. Owen praised the architecture. It was, he said, the most perfectly-constructed little gallery he had ever seen, and he ought to know, for he had seen every gallery in Europe. But he had not been here for many years and had quite forgotten it. “A veritable radiation of masterpieces,” he said, stepping aside to see one. But the girl was the greater attraction, and only half satisfied he returned to her, and when the attraction of the pictures grew irresistible he tried to engage her attention in their beauties, so that he might be allowed to enjoy them. To his surprise and pleasure the remarks he had hazarded provoked an extraordinary interest in her, and she begged of him to tell her more about the paintings. He was not without suspicion that the pictures were a secondary interest; but as it was clear that to hear him talk excited her admiration, he favoured her with all he knew regarding the Dutch school. She followed attentive as a peahen, he spreading a gorgeous tail of accumulated information. He asked if the dark background in Cuyp’s picture, “The White Horse and the Riding School,” was not admirable? And that old woman peeling onions in her little kitchen, painted by a modern would be realistic and vulgar; but the Dutchman knew that by light and shade the meanest subject could be made as romantic as a fairy tale. As dreamers and thinkers they did not compare with the Italians, but as painters they were equal to any. They were the first to introduce the trivialities of daily life into Art — the toil of the field, the gross pleasures of the tavern. “Look at these boors drinking; they are by Ostade. Are they not admirably drawn and painted? “Brick-making in a Landscape, by Teniers the younger.” Won’t you look at this? How beautiful! How interesting is its grey sky! Here are a set of pictures by Wouvermans — pictures of hawking. Here is a Brouwer, a very rare Dutch master, a very fine example too. And here is a Gerard Dow. Miss Innes, will you look at this composition? Is it not admirable? That rich curtain hung across the room, how beautifully painted, how sonorous in colour.”
“Ah! she’s playing a virginal!” said Evelyn, suddenly. “She is like me, playing and thinking of other things. You can see she is not thinking of the music. She is thinking ... she is thinking of the world outside.”
This pleased him, and he said, “Yes, I suppose it is like your life; it is full of the same romance and mystery.”
“What romance, what mystery? Tell me.”
They sat down on the bench in the third room, opposite the colonnade by Watteau, to which his thoughts frequently went, while telling her how, when cruising among the Greek Islands, he had often seen her, sometimes sitting in the music-room playing the virginal, sometimes walking in the ornamental park under a wet, grey sky, a somewhat desolate figure hurrying through shadows of storm.
“How strange you should think all that. It is quite true. I often walked in that hateful park.”
“You will never be able to stand another winter in Dulwich.”
She raised her eyes, and he noticed with an inward glee their little frightened look.
“I thought of you in that ornamental park watching London from the crest of the hill; and I thought of London — great, unconscious London — waiting to be awakened with the chime of your voice.”
She turned her head aside, overcome by his praise, and he exulted, seeing the soft rose tint mount into the whiteness of her face.
“You must not say such things to me. How you do know how to praise!”
“You don’t realise how wonderful you are.”
“You should not say such things, for if they are not true, I shall be so miserable.”
“Of course they are true,” he said, hushing his voice; and in his exultation there was a savour of cruelty. “You don’t realise how wonderful your story is. As I sailed through the Greek Isles, I thought less and less of that horrid, red-haired woman; your face, dim at first, grew clearer and clearer.... All my thoughts, all things converged to you and were absorbed in you, until, one day on the deck, I felt that you were unhappy; the knowledge came, how and whence I know not; I only know that the impulse to return was irresistible. I called to the skipper, and told him to put her head about.”
“Then you did think of me whilst you were away?”
Evelyn looked at him with her soft, female eyes, and meeting his keen, bright, male eyes, she drew away from him with a little dread. Immediately after, this sensation of dread gave way to a delicious joy; an irresponsible joy deep down in her heart, a joy so intimate that she was thankful to know that none could know it but herself.
Her woman’s instinct told her that many women had loved him. She suspected that the little lilt in his voice, and the glance that accompanied it, were the relics of an old love affair. She hoped it was not a survival of Georgina.
“It must be nearly one o’clock. It is time for you to come to talk to father about the Greek hymn.”
“Let’s look at this picture first— ‘The Fête beneath the Colonnade’ — it is one of the most beautiful things in the world.”
CHAPTER FIVE
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, sunni
ng 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.”
