by George Moore
“It really is very sad,” Evelyn said, her eyes twinkling with the humour of the idea, “that anyone should think that such figuration could replace sculpture.”
“But you will not deny that the actor and the actress can supply part of the picturesqueness of a dramatic action.”
“No, indeed; but not by attitudinising, but by gestures that tell the emotion that is in the mind.”
By some obscure route of which they were not aware, these artistic discussions wound around the idea which dominated their minds, and they were led back to it continually. The story of “Tristan and Isolde” seemed to be their own story, and when their eyes met, each divined what was passing in the other’s mind. The music was afloat on the currents of their blood. It gathered in the brain, paralysing it, and the nervous exhaustion was unbearable about six, when the servant had taken away the tea things; and as the afternoon drooped and the beauty of the summer evening began in the park, speech seemed vain, and they could not bring themselves to argue any longer.
It was quite true that she had begun to feel the blankness of the positivist creed, if it were possible to call it a creed. There seemed nothing left of it, it seemed to have shrivelled up like a little withered leaf; true or false, it meant nothing to her, it crushed up like a dried leaf, and the dust escaped through her fingers. Then without any particular reason she remembered a phrase she had heard in the theatre.
“As I always says, if one man isn’t enough for a woman, twenty aren’t too many.”
The homeliness of this speech seemed to accentuate the moral truth, and making application of it to herself, she felt that if she were to take another lover she would not stop at twenty. Her face contracted in an expression of disgust at this glimpse of her inner nature which had been flashed upon her; and looking into herself she could discover nothing but a talent for singing and acting. If she had not had her voice, God only knows what she would have been, and she turned her eyes from a vision of gradual decadence. If she were not to sink to the lowest, she must hold to her love of Owen, and not yield to her love of Ulick. This low nature which she could distinguish in herself she must conquer, or it would conquer her. “If one man isn’t enough for a woman, twenty are not too many.” The humble working woman who had uttered these words was right.... If she were to give way she would have twenty and would end by throwing herself over one of the bridges.
She felt that she must marry Owen, and under this conclusion she stopped like one who has come face to face with a blank wall. But did she love him well enough to marry him? She loved him, but was her present love as intense as the love that had obsessed her whole nature in Paris six years ago? She tried to think that it was, and found casual consolation in the thought that if she were not so mad about him now as she was then, her love was deeper; it had become a part of herself, and was founded on such knowledge of his character that nothing could change or alter it. She knew now that in spite of all his faults she could trust him, and that was something; she knew that his love for her was enduring, that it was not a mere passing passion, as it easily might have been. He had given her fame, wealth, position — everything a woman could desire. Some might blame him for having taken her away from her home, but she did not blame him, for she knew that she could not have remained with her father at that time. If she had not gone away with Owen she might have killed herself; something had given way within her, she had to do what she had done.
But did she love Owen, or was she getting tired of him? It was so easy to ask and so difficult to answer these questions. However closely we look into our souls, some part of the truth escapes us. One always slurred something or exaggerated something.... She remembered that Owen had been very tiresome lately; his egoism was ceaseless; it got upon her nerves, and she felt that, no matter what happened to her, she could not endure it. There were his songs! How tired she was of talking about his songs, the long considerations whether this chord or the other chord, this modulation or another, were the better. He could not compose a dozen bars without having them engraved and sending copies to his friends. He wished the whole world to be occupied about him and his affairs. He was so childish about his music. Other people said, “Oh, yes, very pretty,” but she had to sing it. If she refused, it meant unpleasantness, and though he did not often say so, a charge of ingratitude, for, of course, without him she wouldn’t have been able to sing at all. The worst of it was that he did not see the ridiculous side.
When singing some of his songs, she had caught a look in people’s eyes, a pitying look, and she could not help wondering if they thought that she liked such commonplace, or worse still, if they thought that she was obliged to sing it. But when she had remembered all he had done for her, it seemed quite a disgrace that she should hate to sing his songs. It was the one thing she could do to please him, and she reflected on her selfishness. She seemed to have no moral qualities; the idea she had expressed to Ulick regarding the necessity of chastity in women returned, and she felt sure that in women at least every other virtue is dependent on that virtue. But when Owen was ill she had travelled hundreds of miles to nurse him; she had not hesitated a moment, and she might have caught the fever. She wouldn’t have done that if she did not love him.... She was always thinking how she could help him, she would do anything for him. But he was such a strange man. There were times when there was no one kinder, gentler, more affectionate, but at other times he turned round and snapped like a mad dog. The desire to be rude took him at times like a disease; this was his most obvious fault. But his worst fault, at least in her eyes, was his love of parade; his determination to appear to the world in the aspect which he thought was his by birth and position. Notwithstanding a seeming absence of affection and candour, he was always acting a part. True that he played the part very well; and his snobbery was never vulgar.
Thinking of him profoundly, looking into his nature with the clear sight of six years of life with him, she decided that the essential fault was an inability to forego the temptation of the moment. For him the temptation of the moment was the greatest of all. He was the essential child, and had carried all the child’s passionate egoism into his middle age. One gave way because everything seemed to mean so much more to him that it could to oneself. He could not be deprived of his toy; his toy came before everything. But why did he make himself offensive to many people by speaking against Christianity? It was so illogical to love art as he did and to hate religion.... He had listened much more indulgently to Ulick than she had expected, and seemed to perceive the picturesqueness of the gods, Angus and Lir. It was Christianity that irritated and changed him to the cynic he was not, and forced him into arguments which she hated: “that when you went to the root of things, no one ever acted except from a selfish motive” and his aphorism, “I don’t believe in temptations that one doesn’t yield to.” Her thoughts went back over years, to the very day he had said the words to her for the first time.... It was true in a way, but it was not the whole truth. But to him it was the whole truth, that was the unfortunate part of it, and his life was a complete exemplification of this theory, and the result was one of the unhappiest men on the face of the earth. He would tell you he had the finest place in the world, and the finest pictures in the world, yet these things did not save him from unhappiness. He could not understand that happiness is attained through renunciation. He had never renounced anything, and so his life was a mere triviality. The clearness of her vision surprised her; she paused a moment and then continued. He must always be amused, he could not bear to be alone. Distraction, distraction, distraction was his one cry. She had to combat the spectre of boredom and save the man from himself. Hitherto she had done this, it had been her pleasure, but if she married him it would become her mission, her duty, her life. Could she undertake it? Her heart sank. He had worn her out, she could do no more. She grew frightened, life seemed too much for her; and then she bit her lips, and vowed that whatever it cost her she would marry him if he wished her to.... If she did not mean
to take the consequences, she ought not to have gone away with him. To be Owen’s wife was perchance her mission.
It had always been arranged that they were to be married when she left the stage. But he wished her to remain on the stage till she had played Kundry; but if she were going to leave the stage she did not care to delay, nor did she care for the part of Kundry. The meaning of the part escaped her.... So the time had come for her to offer herself to Owen. Whatever his desires might be, his honour would force him to say Yes. So there was no escape. Fate had decreed it so, she was to be his wife; but one thing she need not endure, and that was unnecessary suspense. She had decided to go to Lady Ascott’s ball.... But she wouldn’t see him there. He was kept indoors by the gout. He had written asking her to come and pass the evening with him.... She might call to see him on her way to the ball; yes, that is what she would do, and she sat down at once and wrote a note.
And she laughed and talked during dinner, and was surprised when Lady Duckle remarked how pale and ill she was looking, for she thought she was making a fine outward show of high spirits. She and Lady Duckle were dining alone, and she tried to devise a plan for going to Berkeley Square without taking Lady Duckle into her confidence. The horrible scene with Owen flitted before her eyes while talking of other things. And so the evening dragged itself out in the drawing-room.
“Olive, I want to make a call before going to Lady Ascott’s; I will send the carriage back for you.”
“But we need not get there until a quarter to one. There will be plenty of time.”
“Very well,” Evelyn answered, as unconcernedly as she could. “I’ll be here a little after twelve.”
In the carriage she remembered that she was going to the same house to tell him that she would be his wife as she had gone to tell him she would be his mistress.
“Sir Owen has been very bad to-day, miss,” the butler said in a confidential undertone. “It has taken him again in his right toe;” and he leaned forward to open the door of Owen’s private sitting-room.
She passed in, the door closed softly behind her, and she saw her lover lying in a large, chintz-covered arm-chair, full of cushions, deep like a feather bed. He held his book high, so that all the light of the electric lamp fell upon it, and the small, wrinkled face seemed to have suddenly grown older behind the spectacles, and the appearance at that moment was of a man just slipping over the years that divides middle from old age.
In the single second that elapsed before they spoke, Evelyn felt and understood a great deal. Never had Owen seemed so like himself; the old age which so visibly had laid its wrinkles and infirmities upon him was clearly his old age, and the old age of his fathers before him. He was in his own old room, planned and ordered by himself. Even his arm-chair seemed characteristic of him. With whatever hardships he might put up in the hunting field or the deer forest, he believed in the deepest arm-chair that upholstery could stuff when he came home. In this room were his personal pictures, those he had bought himself. They, of course, included a beautiful woman by Gainsborough, and a pellucid evening sky, with a group of pensive trees, by Corot. There were beautiful painted tables and chairs, and marble and ormolu clocks, the refined and gracious designs of the best periods; and the sight of Owen sitting amid all these attempts to capture happiness, revealed to her the moral idea of which this man was but a symbol; and the thought that life without a moral purpose is but a passing spectre, and that our immortality lies in our religious life, occurred to her again. His first remark, too, about his gout, that it wasn’t much, but just enough to make life a curse — could she tell him what end was served by torturing us in this way? — laid, as it were, an accent upon the thoughts of him that were passing in her mind.
It was that crouching attitude in the arm-chair that had made him seem so old. Now that he had taken off his spectacles, and was standing up, he did not look older than his age. He wore a silk shirt and a black velvet smoking suit, and had kept his figure — it still went in at the waist. She admired him for a moment and then pitied him, for he limped painfully and pulled over one of his own chairs for her. But she declined it, choosing a less comfortable one, feeling that she must sit straight up if she were to moralise. She had imagined that the subject would introduce itself in the course of conversation, and that it would develop imperceptibly. She had imagined that they would speak of the first performance of “Tristan and Isolde,” now distant but a couple of days, or of Lady Ascott’s ball, at which she had promised to appear. But Owen had spoken of a song which he had re-written that afternoon, not having anything else to do. He believed he had immensely improved it, and wished that she would try it over. To sing one of his songs, to decipher manuscript, was the last thing she felt she could do, and the proposal irritated her. Her whole life was at stake; it had cost her a great deal to come to the decision that she must either marry him or send him away. Partly on purpose, and partly because she could not help it, her face assumed a calm and fixed expression which he knew well.
“Evelyn, you’re going to say something disagreeable. Don’t, I’ve had enough to worry me lately; there’s my mother’s health, and this, miserable attack of gout.”
“I hope you won’t think what I’ve come to say disagreeable, but one never knows.” He waited anxiously, and after some pause she said, though it seemed to her that she had come to the point much too abruptly, “Owen, was it not arranged that we should marry when I left the stage?” She had not been able to lend herself to the diplomatic subtleties which she had been considering all the evening, and had stumbled in the first step. But the mistake had been made, they were face to face with the question — it was for her not to give way. She had noticed the look that had passed between his eyes, and she was not surprised at the slight evasion of his answer, “But you are going to sing Kundry next year?” for she knew him to be naturally as averse to marriage as she was herself.
“I don’t think I should succeed as Kundry. I don’t know what the part means.”
“But she’s a penitent. You like penitents; your Elisabeth—”
“Elizabeth is different. Elizabeth is an inward penitent, Kundry is an external, and you know I can do nothing with externalities.”
He did not understand, and it was impossible to explain without entering into a complete exposition of Ulick’s idea regarding “Parsifal.” The subject of “Parsifal” had always been disagreeable to him, but he had not been able to find any argument against the art of it. So the criticism “revolting hypocrisy,” “externality,” and the statement that the prelude to “Lohengrin” was an inspiration, whereas the prelude to “Parsifal” was but a marvellous piece of handicraft, delighted him. He had always known these things, but had not been able to give them expression. He wondered how Evelyn had attained to so clear an understanding, and then, unconsciously detecting another mind in the argument, he said —
“I wonder what Ulick Dean thinks of ‘Parsifal?’ Something original, I’m sure.”
She could not explain that she had not intended to deceive; she could not tell him that she was so pressed and obsessed by the question of her marriage that she hardly knew what she was saying, and had repeated Ulick’s ideas mechanically. She already seemed to stand convicted of insincerity. He evidently suspected her, and all the while he spoke of Ulick and “Parsifal,” she suffered a sort of trembling sickness, and that he should have perceived whence her enlightenment had come embittered her against him. Suddenly he came to the end of what he had to say; their eyes met, and he said, —
“Very well, Evelyn, we’ll be married next week; is that soon enough?”
The abruptness of his choice fell upon her so suddenly, that she answered stupidly that next week would do very well. She felt that she ought to get up and kiss him, and she was painfully conscious that her expression was the reverse of pleased.
“I don’t want to limp to the altar; were it not for the gout I’d say to-morrow.... But something has happened, something has forced you to this?”
He did not dare to suggest scruples of conscience. But his thoughts were already back in Florence.
“Only that you often have said you’d like to marry me. One never knows if such things are true. It may have been mere gallantry on your part; on the other hand, I am vain enough to believe that perhaps you meant it.” Then it seemed to her that she must be sincere. “As I am determined that our present relations shall cease, there was no help for it but to come and tell you.”
Her eyes were cast down; the expression of her face was calm resolution, whereas his face betrayed anxiety, and the twitching and pallor of the eyes a secret indecision with which he was struggling.
“Then I suppose it is scruples of conscience.... You’ve been to Mass at St. Joseph’s.”
“We won’t enter into that question. We’ve talked it for the last six years; you cannot change me.”
The desire to please was inveterate in her, and she felt that she had never been so displeasing, and she was aware that he was showing to better advantage in this scene than she was. She wished that he had hesitated; if he had only given her some excuse for — She did not finish the sentence in her mind, but thought instead that she liked him better when he wasn’t so good; goodness did not seem to suit him.
She wore a beautiful attractive gown, a mauve silk embroidered with silver irises, and he regretted his gout which kept him from the ball. He caught sight of her as she passed down the glittering floor, saving with a pretty movement of her shoulders the dress that was slipping from them, he saw himself dancing with her.... They passed in front of a mirror, and looking straight over her shoulder his eyes followed the tremulous sparkle of the diamond wings which she wore in her hair. Then, yielding to an impulse of which he was not ashamed, for it was as much affection as it was sensual, he drew over a chair — he would have knelt at her feet had it not been for his gout — and passing his arm about her waist, he said —
