by George Moore
In comparing her present attitude of mind with that of last Thursday, she was glad to notice that to-day she could not think that her father would not forgive her. Her talk on the subject with Ulick had reassured her. He would not have been so insistent if he had not been sure that her father would forgive her in the end. But there would be recriminations, and at the very thought of them she felt her courage sink, and she asked herself why he should make her miserable if he was going to forgive her in the end. Her plans were to talk to him about his choir, and, if that did not succeed, to throw herself on her knees. She remembered how she had thrown herself on her knees on the morning of the afternoon she had gone away. And since then she had thrown herself at his feet many times — every time she sang in the “Valkyrie.” The scene in which Wotan confides all his troubles and forebodings to Brunnhilde had never been different from the long talks she and her father used to drop into in the dim evenings in Dulwich. She had cheered him when he came home depressed after a talk with the impossible Father Gordon, as she had since cheered Wotan in his deep brooding over the doom of the gods predicted by Wala, when the dusky foe of love should beget a son in hate. Wotan had always been her father; Palestrina, Walhalla, and the stupid Jesuits, what were they? She had often tried to work out the allegory. It never came out quite right, but she always felt sure in setting down Father Gordon as Alberich. The scene in the third act, when she throws herself at Wotan’s feet and begs his forgiveness (the music and the words together surged upon her brain), was the scene that now awaited her. She had at last come to this long-anticipated scene; and the fictitious scene she had acted as she was now going to act the real scene. True that Wotan forgave Brunnhilde after putting her to sleep on the fire-surrounded rock, where she should remain till a pure hero should come to release her. A nervous smile curled her lip for a moment; she trembled in her very entrails, and as they passed down the long, mean streets of Camberwell her thoughts frittered out in all sorts of trivial observation and reflection. She wondered if the mother who called down the narrow alley had ever been in love, if she had ever deceived her husband, if her father had reproved her about the young man she kept company with. The milkman presented to her strained mind some sort of problem, and the sight of the railway embankment told her she was nearing Dulwich. Then she saw the cedar at the top of the hill, whither she had once walked to meet Owen. ... Now it was London nearly all the way to Dulwich.
But when they entered the familiar village street she was surprised at her dislike of it; even the chestnut trees, beautiful with white bloom, were distasteful to her, and life seemed contemptible beneath them. In Dulwich there was no surprise — life there was a sheeted phantom, it evoked a hundred dead Evelyns, and she felt she would rather live in any ghostly graveyard than in Dulwich. Her very knowledge of the place was an irritation to her, and she was pleased when she saw a house which had been built since she had been away. But every one of the fields she knew well, and the sight of every tree recalled a dead day, a dead event. That road to the right led to the picture gallery, and at the cross road she had been nearly run over by a waggon while trundling a hoop. But eyesight hardly helped her in Dulwich; she had only to think, to see it. The slates of a certain house told her that another minute would bring her to her father’s door, and before the carriage turned the corner she foresaw the patch of black garden. But if her father were at home he might refuse to see her, and she was not certain if she should force her way past the servant or return home quietly. The entire dialogue of the scene between her and Margaret passed through her mind, and the very intonation of their voices. But it was not Margaret who opened the door to her.
“This way, miss, please.”
“No, I’ll wait in the music-room.”
“Mr. Innes won’t have no one wait there in his absence. Will you come into the parlour?”
“No, I think I’ll wait in the music-room. I’m Miss Innes; Mr. Innes is my father.”
“What, miss, are you the great singer?”
“I suppose I am.”
“Do you know, miss, something told me that you was. The moment I saw the carriage, I said, “Here she is; this is her for certain.” Will you come this way, miss? I’ll run and get the key.”
“And who was it,” Evelyn said, “that told you I was a singer?”
“Lor’! miss, didn’t half Dulwich go to hear you sing at the opera?”
“Did you?”
“No, I didn’t go, Miss, but I heard Mr. Dean and your father talking of you. I’ve read about you in the papers; only this morning there was a long piece.”
“If father talks of me he’ll forgive me,” thought Evelyn. The girl’s wonderment made her smile, and she said —
“But you’ve not told me your name.”
“My name is Agnes, miss.”
“Have you been long with my father? When I left, Margaret—”
“Ah! she’s dead, miss. I came to your father the day after the funeral.”
Evelyn walked up the room, overcome by the eternal absence of something which had hitherto been part of her life. For Margaret took her back to the time her mother was alive; farther back still — to the very beginning of her life. She had always reckoned on Margaret.... So Margaret was dead. Margaret would never know of this meeting. Margaret might have helped her. Poor Margaret! At that moment she caught sight of her mother’s eyes. They seemed to watch her; she seemed to know all about Owen, and afraid of the haunting, reproving look, Evelyn studied the long oval face and the small brown eyes so unlike hers. One thing only she had inherited from her mother — her voice. She had certainly not inherited her conduct from her mother; her mother was one of the few great artistes against whom nothing could be said. Her mother was a good woman.... What did she think of her daughter? And seeing her cold, narrow face, she feared her mother would regard her conduct even more severely than her father.... “But if she had lived I should have had no occasion to go away with Owen.” She wondered. At the bottom of her heart she knew that Owen was as much as anything else a necessity in her life.... She moved about the room and wished the hands of the clock could be advanced a couple of hours, for then the terrible scene with her father would be over. If he could only forgive her at once, and not make her miserable with reproaches, they could have such a pleasant evening.
In this room her past life was blown about her like spray about a rock. She remembered the days when she went to London with her father to give lessons; the miserable winter when she lost her pupils.... How she had waited in this room for her father to come back to dinner; the faintness of those hungry hours; worse still, that yearning for love. She must have died if she had not gone away. If it had to happen all over again she must act as she had acted. How well she remembered the moment when she felt that her life in Dulwich had become impossible. She was coming from the village where she had been paying some bills, and looking up she had suddenly seen the angle of a house and a bare tree, and she could still hear the voice which had spoken out of her very soul. “Shall I never get away from this place?” it had cried. “Shall I go on doing these daily tasks for ever?” The strange, vehement agony of the voice had frightened her.... At that moment her eyes were attracted by a sort of harpsichord. “One of father’s experiments,” she said, running her fingers over the keys. “A sort of cross between a harpsichord and a virginal; up here the intonation is that of a virginal.”
“I forgot to ask you miss” — Evelyn turned from the window, startled; it was Agnes who had come back— “if you was going to stop for dinner, for there’s very little in the house, only a bit of cold beef. I should be ashamed to put it on the table, miss; I’m sure you couldn’t eat it. Master don’t think what he eats; he’s always thinking of his music. I hope you aren’t like that, miss?”
“So he doesn’t eat much. How is my father looking, Agnes?”
“Middling, miss. He varies about a good bit; he’s gone rather thin lately.”
“Is he lonely, do you think ... in
the evenings?”
“No, miss; I don’t hear him say nothing about being lonely. For the last couple of years he never did more than come home to sleep and his meals, and he’d spend the evenings copying out the music.”
“And off again early in the morning?”
“That’s it, miss, with his music tied up in a brown paper parcel. Sometimes Mr. Dean comes and helps him to write the music.”
“Ah!... but I’m sorry he doesn’t eat better.”
“He eats better when Mr. Dean’s here. They has a nice little dinner together. Now he’s taken up with that ’ere instrument, the harpy chord, they’s making. He’s comin’ home to-night to finish it; he says he can’t get it finished nohow — that they’s always something more to do to it.”
“I wonder if we could get a nice dinner for him this evening?”
“Well, miss, you see there’s no shops to speak of about here. You know that as well as I do.”
“I wonder what your cooking is like?”
“I don’t know, miss; p’r’aps it wouldn’t suit you, but I’ve been always praised for my cooking.”
“I could send for some things; my coachman could fetch them from town.”
“Then there’s to-morrow to be thought about if you’re stopping here. I tell you we don’t keep much in the house.”
“Is my father coming home to dinner?”
“I can’t say for certain, miss, only that he said ‘e’d be ‘ome early to finish the harpy chord. ’E might have ’is dinner out and come ‘ome directly after, but I shouldn’t think that was likely.”
“You can cook a chicken, Agnes?”
“Lor’! yes, miss.”
“And a sole?”
“Yes, miss; but in ordering, miss, you must think of to-morrow. You won’t like to have a nice dinner to-night and a bit of hashed mutton to-morrow.”
“I’ll order sufficient. You’ve got no wine, I suppose?”
“No, we’ve no wine, miss, only draught beer.”
“I’ll tell my coachman to go and fetch the things at once.”
When she returned to the music-room, Agnes asked her if she was going to stop the night.
“Because I should have to get your rooms ready, miss.”
“That I can’t tell, Agnes.... I don’t think so.... You won’t tell my father I’m here when you let him in?... I want it to be a surprise.”
“I won’t say nothing, miss. I’ll leave him to find it out.”
Evelyn felt that the girl must have guessed her story, must have perceived in her the repentant daughter — the erring daughter returned home. Everything pointed to that fact. Well, it couldn’t be helped if she had.
“If my father will only forgive me; if that first dreadful scene were only over, we could have an enchanting evening together.”
She was too nervous to seek out a volume of Bach and let her fingers run over the keys; she played anything that came into her head, sometimes she stopped to listen. At last there came a knock, and her heart told her it was his. In another moment he would be in the room. But seeing her he stopped, and, without a word, he went to a table and began untying a parcel of music.
“Father, I’ve come to see you.... You don’t answer. Father, are you not going to speak to me? I’ve been longing to see you, and now—”
“If you had wanted to see me, you’d have come a month ago.”
“I was not in London a month ago.”
“Well, three weeks ago.”
“I ought to have done so, but I had no courage. I could only see you looking at me as you are looking now. Forgive me, father.... I’m your only daughter; she’s full of failings, but she has never ceased to love you.”
He sat at the table fumbling with the string that had tied the parcel he had brought in, and she stood looking at him, unable to speak. She seemed to have said all there was to say, and wished she could throw herself at his feet; but she could not, something held her back. She prayed for tears, but her eyes remained dry; her mouth was dry, and a flame seemed to burn behind her eyes. She could only think that this might be the last time she would see him. The silence seemed a great while. She repeated her words, “I had not the courage to come before.” At the sound of her voice she remembered that she must speak to him at once of his choir, and so take their thoughts from painful reminiscence.
“I went to St. Joseph’s on Thursday, but you weren’t there. You gave Vittoria’s mass last Sunday. I started to go, but I had to turn back.”
She had not gone to hear her father’s choir, because she could not resist Lady Ascott’s invitation, and no more than the invitation could she resist the lie; she had striven against it, but in spite of herself it had forced itself through her lips, and now her father seemed to have some inkling of the truth, for he said —
“If you had cared to hear my choir you’d have gone. You needn’t have seen me, whereas I was obliged—”
Evelyn guessed that he had been to the opera. “How good of him to have gone to hear me,” she thought. She hated herself for having accepted Lady Ascott’s invitation, and the desire to ask him what he thought of her voice seemed to her an intolerable selfishness.
“What were you going to say, father?”
“Nothing.... I’m glad you didn’t come.”
“Wasn’t it well sung?” and she was seized with nervousness, and instead of speaking to him about his basses as she had intended, she asked him about the trebles.
“They are the worst part of the choir. That contrapuntal music can only be sung by those who can sing at sight. The piano has destroyed the modern ear. I daresay it has spoilt your ear.”
“My ear is all right, I think.”
“I hope it is better than your heart.”
Evelyn’s face grew quite still, as if it were frozen, and seeing the pain he had caused her he was moved to take her in his arms and forgive her straight away. He might have done so, but she turned, and passing her hand across her eyes she went to the harpsichord. She played one of the little Elizabethan songs, “John, come kiss me now.” Then an old French song tempted her voice by its very appropriateness to the situation— “Que vous me coûtez cher, mon coeur, pour vos plaisirs.” But there was a knot in her throat, she could not sing, she could hardly speak. She endeavoured to lead her father into conversation, hoping he might forget her conduct until it was too late for him to withdraw into resentment. She could see that the instrument she was playing on he had made himself. In some special intention it was filled with levers and stops, the use of which was not quite apparent to her; and she could see by the expression on his face that he was annoyed by her want of knowledge of the technicalities of the instrument.
So she purposely exaggerated her ignorance.
He fell into the trap and going to her he said, “You are not making use of the levers.”
“Oh, am I not?” she said innocently. “What is this instrument — a virginal or a harpsichord?”
“It is a harpsichord, but the intonation is that of a virginal. I made it this winter. The volume of sound from the old harpsichord is not sufficient in a large theatre, that is why the harpsichord music in ‘Don Juan’ has to be played on the fiddles.”
He stopped speaking and she pressed him in vain to explain the instrument. She went on playing.
“The levers,” he said at last, “are above your knees. Raise your knees.”
She pretended not to understand.
“Let me show you.” He seated himself at the instrument. “You see the volume of sound I obtain, and all the while I do not alter the treble.”
“Yes, yes, and the sonority of the instrument is double that of the old harpsichord. It would be heard all over Covent Garden.”
She could see that the remark pleased him. “I’ll sing ‘Zerline’ if you’ll play it.”
“You couldn’t sing ‘Zerline,’ it isn’t in your voice.”
“You don’t know what my voice is like.”
“Evelyn, I wonder how you c
an expect me to forgive you; I wonder how I can speak to you. Have you forgotten how you went away leaving me to bear the shame, the disgrace?”
“I have come to beg forgiveness, not to excuse myself. But I wrote to you from Paris that I was going to live with Lady Duckle, and that you were to say that I had gone abroad to study singing.”
“I’m astonished, Evelyn, that you can speak so lightly.”
“I do not think lightly of my conduct, if you knew the miserable days it has cost me. Reproach me as you will about my neglect toward you, but as far as the world is concerned there has been no disgrace.”
“You would have gone all the same; you only thought of yourself. Brought up as you have been, a Catholic—”
“My sins, father, lie between God and myself. What I come for is to beg forgiveness for the wrong I did you.”
He did not answer, but he seemed to acquiesce, and it was a relief to her to feel that it was not the moral question that divided them; convention had forced him to lay some stress upon it, but clearly what rankled in his heart, and prevented him from taking her in his arms, was a jealous, purely human feud. This she felt she could throw herself against and overpower.
“Father, you must forgive me, we are all in all to each other; nothing can change that. Ever since mother’s death — you remember when the nurse told us all was over — ever since I’ve felt that we were in some strange way dependent on each other. Our love for each other is the one unalterable thing. My music you taught me; the first songs I sang were at your concerts, and now that we have both succeeded — you with Palestrina, and I with Wagner — we must needs be aliens. Father, can’t you see that that can never be? if you don’t you do not love me as I do you. You’re still thinking that I left you. Of course, it was very wrong, but has that changed anything? Father, tell me, tell me, unless you want to kill me, that you do not believe that I love you less.”
